'Twas the night before Wednesday...

Wait, what was that? We’re not supposed to open presents until the 25th of the month? Tradition, you say?

Oops. Well, scratch that.

Yeah, we’re not big on tradition I guess. Mostly me, and mostly it’s not even necessary being against tradition, as it is being impatient in general. Especially when there’s a gift and my name is attached (to or from, doesn’t matter). So we sat around the first week of December telling each other how we know what the other is getting, and making deals about if I can open this one, then you can open that one, et cetera.

Then came the fateful day. What day exactly is not important, and I can’t even remember what day it was and it’s not like we’re going to make a new tradition out of it or anything, so just focus on the fact that it was the first week of December. We decided to open a present each, and next thing we knew, the tree was bare. Was a good X-mas? Yeah, I’d say it was.

I got The Girl a new dining table. When we moved in here, we had inherited this hideous excuse for furniture. It was a round, glass-top dining table with four chairs on rollers. The wood was about the color of pale and it looked like plastic. And the fabric padding on the chair was a pale baby blue. I guess it was supposed to be old-folks furniture, but it seemed even to gaudy for that; it had to be blind-folks furniture or something. Anyway. It’s gone now, replaced by a cherrywood-colored set, 48” long with 4 chairs. It’s not the greatest quality in the world, but it was a bargain and will do for us until we get to where it is we’re going, and even into some of the time once we get there.

As for me… well I got a great gift, one that I actually asked for last year: an old-fashioned, Double-Edged Safety Razor. Score! I’ve been shaving with it for a week or two now, and I can say that it’s a bit different than the cartridge razors my generation has grown up with, and quite a bit better once you figure it out.

I have had issues with the bottom of my neck for many years now. I have not been able to shave more than a couple of times a week for that time, and even then it gets irritated quickly. I’m not 100% sure what the main culprit is, but I suspect is has a lot to do with the fact that my stubble is like rod-iron gates, and today’s razors generally suck ass. I just couldn’t do it. I could shave once against the grain for a close, smooth shave, and then 3 or 4 days later I could shave with the grain and look halfway presentable for half a day, or I could shave with the grain every 2nd or 3rd day and look like I was constantly a day removed from a long vacation. This was life with my face.

It’s not the greatest set in the world, but from what I understand, the more expensive ones are really just more convenient in how they accept the blade itself, and as long as you have a badger hair brush (this is, apparently, the holy grail of the “DE” shave) you’re on the right track. And thus far I’m very impressed. Impressed enough in fact that I think all of you should do it, too.

Think of this: I don’t have much an issue with irritation any longer, the blades last at least as long, and they’re seriously pennies on the dollar. Contrast this with today’s cartridges, which run anywhere from 2 or 3 shoddy blades all the way up to 5, across your face with each and every stroke. And to top it off, you can generally only get a couple of good shaves out of it (unless you’re cheating) before you have to replace the cartridge, and those run anywhere from $8 for a 4-pack to $11 for a 4-pack,depending on the model.

You do the math, right? I mean, better results, less cost… it’s like someone saying you can either sleep with an ugly partner that bitches constantly, or a pretty one that is gentle and compliant.

I’ll take “That’s a f*cking Easy One” for $2000, Alex.

Best. Christmas gift. EVER.

Close Calls at the 'Bob household

Rheumatoid and The Girl
For the last year or so, The Girl has had the misfortune of having a case of swollen knuckles. They come and go and are usually accompanied by some strange red “lumps” around the knuckles as well. It seems that during the Winter has been the worst, and finally this time around we decided that it was getting scary enough that she should seek medical advice on the matter.

This was made scarier by the mention of Rheumatoid Arthritis by the lady that caught sight of them when she was renewing her Birth Control.

We don’t currently have insurance, because… well, we don’t fall ill often and we tend to heal. And we’re legitimately together, so it’s not like we’re scared of coming up with Genital Warts or something, and the cost of insurance is still high, especially when you consider that you still have to shell out the dough for Co-Pay when you visit the doctor. I mean, wtf, really. You pay insurance, so that you can visit the doctor, and pay again. Seriously, I think something’s amiss here.

Plus, the last time I saw a doctor was for a routine physical, where I caught something and damn near died 3 days later, so yeah, no thanks I think I’ll stay the f*ck away from all the sick people.

Anyway, $157 dollars later and we were waiting on a phone call for the results of the blood work. And spending free time researching information on – and treatments for – the disease.



Early Call
We were expecting to be called no earlier than Saturday (today) but more than likely have it put off until Monday. Yesterday however, she got the call while I was at work. It came back negative.

Which is both great news and a little, tiny bit of a bummer. Because, if it’s NOT RA, then what the hell is it? It’s got to be an allergy to something, but god knows what, right? I’m currently thinking it might have something to do with her coffee regimen. No, seriously. During the Winter, she drinks more of it (and all the strange stuff she adds to it). She also had some flare-ups in late spring, near finals for that ending semester at school, during which time she was drinking coffee more heavily again.

It doesn’t seem to be a topical thing as much as an internal thing, so I’m sticking to dietary items, but there’s also the idea that it’s related to the flocking on the inside of the dishwashing gloves, though I doubt it. What else could it be? I’m thinking that perhaps a call to the family doctor (read: Daddy Dr. Stepdaddy) is in order.

Hopefully it’s not too early.



Silver Lining imagined, disintegrates
One good side to the RA thing was that it would be a legitimate reason to not have kids. Why don’t you guys have kids? Because she has a disease that appears to be at least partially hereditary. Would put a quick stop to all that discussion rather quick.

C’est la vie. It was not meant to be, though. Kids are still on the table. Damn.

Random Postage-Due Occurrences

Yesterday was an odd occurrence: we received a chain letter at work.

And I don’t mean I opened my email, and there was this forwarded email about making a wish and then forwarding the email to 10 people or else I’d be hit with 3 years of bad luck, just like these other people who got hit by a car THE VERY NEXT DAY AND DIED or got syphilis and typhoid and genital warts. I mean that the mail carrier came up to me, and said “this is yours.”

Not quite. He came up to me and said that we had a letter that had been sent to us postage due. $1.68. Not only that, but there was no return address. So, no return address, no postage, and I’m on the verge of saying “I don’t want it.” I mean, what if it’s anthrax? What if it’s pornographic material? A Bomb? But it’s not my company, hell it’s not even my store, so I figure that just to be safe, I’ll run it by the Store Manager, see what he wants to do with it.

Good thing I did, let me tell you, and not just because the Store Manager said “pay for it.” That has to be the first step, but what followed was pure hilarity. OK yeah it was a chain letter, but it was more than that. It’s hard to explain, but let’s try by example. It was 30 pages or so, and it ranged from a personal ad for a cross-dressing homosexual, to the expanation of Jehovah’s Witnesses as an evil cult, to lawsuit information for god-knows-what. The first page was a flyer to try out to be the boyfriend of this person as well as the lead singer in the band they were hoping to form (I can only guess it was the person in the personals ad you’re auditioning for). No kidding; auditions to be the boyfriend AND Lead Singer of this yet-to-be-created band. And you couldn’t just sing any songs you chose, you had to sing a particular set of songs outlined in this boyfriend/lead singer audition list, and do it right goddammit.

Wow. Talk about strict requirements, eh? Good LUCK finding someone to fill that role, ma’am or sir (whatever you are/prefer).

So. Glad. We. Accepted. That. Letter. $1.68 does not even begin to come close to the worth of this chain letter. How often… When was the last ti-… it’s not every day you get that kind of laugh in the mail.

So worth it.

Home-Shopping with the 'bob

House Shopping 101
We’re not in dire need of a new place mind you, but we’re looking. Not at much, we’re still poor, but we’re looking. I had been saying that I think the market’s probably going to take another year or two to bottom out, but here’s the thing: bottoms come after the declines slow. If we’re spending $13K annually to rent, and in that year’s span home prices in our range drop only $10K and then bottoms? Was it worth it? No.

And what’s more, I think the market around here is at a point where sellers & banks are starting to realize that the market is not the 2005 housing market, and what’s more, that there’s no such thing as a “2009 housing market.” Meaning, essentially, that there’s what homes sold for last year, and there’s what they’ll sell for in a year or two. I think we might be able to get away with offering a lowball amount of what we predict that the house will/would sell for in 1-2 years. And while at first it may seem rude or low, the reality is… if a home is listed right now @ $200k let’s say, and we offer $170k? That may seem low, but in 12-18 months, when it’s STILL on the market & they are forced to reduce the asking price to $185K, suddenly that “lowball offer” seems about right.

And I’m counting on the banks & sellers to start to come to this realization, that they should be thinking 18-24 months out. I think the time is about right.



Business 101
Another thing we looked into was just buying the property and plopping (?) down a manufactured home onto it. This seemed like a feasibility when we found a 2-acre parcel listed for $80k. We figured, if we could get into a decent-sized (read: 1,500 sq.ft. Or larger) manu for $50-60k, then we’d have basically what we really want for a ‘starter’ home, and at a good price.

This did not materialize. And for many reasons, which I shall enumerate.

I call to see if I can sit down with the local manu- folks and go over available plans & pricing. I get the address, and they tell me that their offices are NOT at the show area, which I knew but hey I needed the address anyway so gimme gimme gimme. About an hour later I arrive at this place, and it’s not even an office suite, it’s a house in a residential neighborhood. Walk in, and I’m greeted by the biggest, most assuredly virgin, inbreed dork I have ever met in my life. He makes me look like a damned porn star he’s so virginly pure and stupid. And it doesn’t get that much better when we meet the incestual father of the inbreed dork. He’s the ringleader I guess, and he comes in, and asks what we want.

Uh, a latté, two shots of flavor & no foam. What do you think we want?!

After we worked through the difficult task of figuring out what we were doing there, we sat down and went over the plans & price list. And right away, I was thinking there’s no way we’re doing this. For the size we would want, we’re looking at at least $85k, and then if you want just a little bit more, maybe a triple-wide (!), it jumps to $125k. You want a solid foundation with that? Add in at least $16k. Sort of makes you wonder what they’re doing in business. I mean, if I was going to have a house built at around 1,800 sq.ft. Or so, I think that honestly, instead of paying $125k plus $16k for a triple-wide & a solid foundation, I’d just have it actually built, thankyouverymuch.

We stayed, we asked the questions we had intended to ask since we had already driven all the way out there, but pretty much when we got back to the car, we made a list of reasons why we would not be doing business with them. It goes a little something like this (and a-one, and a-two, and a-one, two three four!):

• So, you sell manufactured homes, you’re trying to push the manufactured homes thing as being as good or better than a “regular” frame house. Yet…… you run the business out of a regular frame house in an old-fashioned, framed-house neighborhood. Riiiiighhhht…… OK look peeps: perhaps you should have maybe used some of those fabulous proceeds to procure a manu- for yourself, to use as office & residence; sort of show us how awesome these things really are, and how much you stand behind them?

• If you have an inbred, half-retarded offspring that maybe once got a boner over a calculator and/or Bert & Ernie, keep it locked in the back room, well-distracted with lettered blocks or something. He’s scaring away your customers. No lie, the first thing I thought when I saw him was oh great, this isn’t even legit, it’s going to be one of those MLM schemes isn’t it?

• Business 101, y’all: if I stroll into your place of business/residence, don’t ask me what I am doing there. Assume it’s not an accident. Show me what you got, ask questions. I’m here to be sold. So sell. See it’s called business, and you’re doing it wrong.

Dag. We need to move to the midwest. I mean, $150-200k, and all we’re getting is a city lot. California’s too expensive :-(

Family photos for the holiday; Or not, hey whatever

The other day all six of us trotted out to the woods for some pictures. It was the same day, in fact, that I shot the video of the trees. The idea was Holiday Cards. You know, those crappy little things with the pic of the family on the front in those gay-ass sweaters, all smiling and looking just left of the camera, except for little Timmy who’s got Pink Eye and is looking into the lens and pouting, and picking his nose. Yeah, those. Well, The Girl wanted some of that goodness for our little family. You know, Me, Her, Miles, Zoey, and Chase & Hunter. That “little” family.

I don’t know quite where to begin. I mean, where did it all go wrong? I’ll tell you: waking up in the morning. Maybe before that; I think the very idea of this might well have been flawed. And as much as I want to wring her cute little throat sometimes, I can’t really lay the blame on the lil’ woman. After all, I gleefully went along with it, thinking all would work out JUST PEACHY OMG!

Getting ready went smooth. The drive out went smooth. Finding a perfect spot was a little rough – in fact I don’t think we did find the perfect spot. But the troubles really began when we tried to get everyone sat down and still. Honestly, I had envisioned the whole thing in my head. And let me tell you, it did not go according to that grand master plan. The dogs, they did not sit. Or when they did sit, it was facing the wrong direction. Or it was too far apart. Or it was any other bloody thing it could be that was not ‘the right thing,’ and you can imagine that this got old really fast. Really fast.

Cue screaming & yelling, right? Right. Boy did I. The dogs were not happy with daddy, and likewise I was not happy with them. It’s sitting! It’s not hard! You do it all the damned time!

Well the frustration did not end, and subsequently we did not get “The Picture.” We got SOME, but they were not of all of us, and we BARELY got any of all the dogs as it was. The Girl managed a few, and we’re thinking of putting the cards together with one or two of them. People, if you get a Holiday Card with a picture of four dogs, just imagine we’re in there too, OK? And you know what? I eventually calmed down. I reconciled myself to the fact that normal families composed of actual people can’t get this simple act right most of the time; what, were we bat-sh!t crazy for thinking we could pull it off? Two people and four dogs?! Yeah I vote for bat-sh!t crazy

Sticking with RapidWeaver. For now....

With the recent news of Karelia releasing version 1.5.2 of Sandvox, I suddenly found myself comparing it versus what I’m currently using. I’ve done this dance before – when I initially bought my current software – but lately I’ve been running into frustrations that I was fully aware of, and others that I wasn’t even aware they existed before I saw how Sandvox handled them. I’ve been toying around now for like two weeks trying to decide what to do about it/them, and I was pretty close at one point to saying “hell with it” and just either buying it, or not doing a website at all (oddly different ends of the spectrum, I know).

Wanting to switch website creation engines was really about trying to simplify the process; the easier I can make it, the better for me. Of course this has to be balanced with my desire to do things my way; after all, if it was just about ease-of-use and nothing more, I’d have not ever spent a dime and just gone on blogger or something. Or not done a damn thing in the first place.

I mean, I guess what I wanted out of my website was basically myspace, but without all that crappy myspace messing it up, you know? I want my pictures, my movies, my blog, my this & that. But more than just wanting that stuff, I want it to be the way I want it it be. I’m picky like that; sue me.

RapidWeaver has its shortcomings; managing sidebar content is NOT as easy as I feel it should be. What I want I feel is simple enough, but it requires hacks or third-party add-ons to accomplish, and even then only gets close, it doesn’t actually do it: I want my sidebar content to be synced across parent/child pages. So that – for instance – the sidebar you see on my bios main page is the same as the sidebar you see on the bios child pages (me, Betty, Miles, Zoey). And if I make a change – either adding something, deleting, or modifying – that change is automatically reflected on each page, without me having to change it on each one, individually.

Only like 5 pages anyway, right? What’s the big deal? Well Chase & Hunter will eventually get their own pages too, provided they manage to stay alive to their 2-year birthday. So that’s 7. Then there’s the photo pages. See as it stands, there’s already some 20-odd pages, and it will only grow with time. So that means, if I want my sidebar content to be the same across all pages, right now I have to do it manually across all of them. And what’s more, even if I did hack something together to sync them, it’d only suffice for changes. Anything added or deleted would require I go back and do that manually.

Sandvox is nicer in this regard, though still not perfect. As it stands, at least it can sync content across parent/child pages, or even site-wide. See how it works is, you add a “pagelet,” which is a little piece of something that sticks around on the sidebar. It contains most anything, from a link list, to your amazon list, to HTML code you put in to do fantastic things (such as display porn. Just saying). You put these “pagelets” on a parent page (a page with underlings; in the above example, it would be the Bios Home page), and you select to have it inherited by all the children pages. Now, any changes you make to it – or simply the process of adding it – sync to all the pages underneath it as well.

But what it’s missing is finer-grain control. If I create a certain number of pagelets on the parent page, the children pages cannot have a different order. This is mostly fine, except for the pagelets you specify site-wide. These take precedence over everything, so if you have 3 or 4 created from the master template, but say on the Blog page you want your archives for the Blog at the very top or very bottom (duh), you can’t really do that because the site-wide ones will not allow a pagelet specified on a page “below it,” to be moved above it (or below if you specified to have it on the bottom). So you’re limited in the order you can actually work with on particular pages.

RapidWeaver allows more control of course (to the point of not allowing any cool syncing features al all! *groan*). It’s a pain in the ass to have to set up the pages manually, but it can be largely short-cut with some ingenuity and the use of plugins like pluskit & blocks, or @stash. There’s no getting around the addition & subtraction of page elements so far as I can see, however. There are still some niceties that RapidWeaver has over Sandvox, too. That finer-grain control. Just on the blogs, for instance… Sandvox has no way to create tags or categories. Tags like “New Family Members,” as I currently have. Or “Personal” or “Politics & Policy,” my personal fave… And the work that would go into trying to duplicate that functionality… well let’s just say that I ain’t doing it. Period. Either it’s built-in, or it’s not happening, folks.

Then there’s what I can do on any particular page. Say I want to add a video to this page. I just drop it in. It’s not as pretty to get done, but hey, a line of code later, and BOOM! A youtube video of a hot girl doing a hot dance (ga ga ga… ;-) ):

You see, what I wanted to do was make it as easy to create/lay out as it is to look at. Right now it’s not as easy to create as it is to look at, but at least I have some freedom to do it like I want, even if it is more work up front. The more I investigated Sandvox recently, the more it became apparent that it was NOT what I wanted to do; more than anything, I simply wanted to borrow some of the functionality and add it to MY toolset. Alas, as of this writing, I cannot.

RapidWeaver, you still get the nod. By a nose hair, you damned woolly beast; by a nose hair.

Putting up more videos; Check them out

So yeah obviously the drought was short-lived. There’s certain things that I simply MUST post. I will get to those in a minute. In the meantime, I wanted to say that I think I’m going to go in a slightly different direction with some of the things on my website here. I think – for instance – that I’m going to post more videos. I’d been working for a while on how I was going to set them all up, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do it, but after fiddling for a few weeks, I decided on a way and made it stick. It took quite a bit of trying, let me tell you: I had to modify a few things inside my damn program to get what I wanted, and even then it’s not quite what I wanted. But it’s close enough dammit, and as the cool fellas say, “it’s good enough for the girls I go out with.”

Before it was kinda thrown together and not all that sweet-looking; I didn’t want to navigate it, kinda hard to ask you to. Anyway, that’s done with; now it’s just a matter of getting you over there to check out some cool stuff. Head on over to the movies page then, eh?

The thing that really got me started on it was the video with the truck. About a week ago, we went on a nice little hike in a town about 30 miles south of here. It was a nice hike and we finished it off with a decent lunch at a local restaurant (we had coupons! Yay!). But on the way there, I spied a hidden-ish path along a bridge that lead down to the Eel River, and dammit I wanted to get me some of that on the way back.

So I did.

One of the walls was freakin’ hellish-looking, y’all. I came upon it from the topside looking down, and promptly found another way to the bottom; there was no way I was taking my lil’ Tacoma down that. We had fun, splashed, ran away from the dogs for good measure (it’s becoming “our thing;” hopefully the dogs don’t develop a complex). Then on the way back, I spied that hill again. I had my navigator get the hell out of the truck and stand atop the slope, so as to make sure my clearances never actually got too close for comfort, and I gave it a go.

Lo-and-behold, the truck scaled it like it wasn’t even there. It was a pretty decent climb, folks. Take a look at the video. And hey, understand that the video doesn’t do it justice. The slope was close-to-if-not 45º, no lie. Add in that it was deeply pocked the whole way up, and the fact that I started slow and maintained that speed all the way throughout, and you know what you got? A new nickname for the truck, dammit: “The Lil’ Tacoma that Could.” Or maybe “The Mighty Tacoma.” or “The Invincible Tacoma.” Maybe “The Amazing Tacoma.”

We’re still working on it, dammit.

Anyway, it got me thinking: I really should throw up more videos that show off certain things that just don’t come across well in photo. One in particular that I can think of, is the local trees. Words don’t do them justice. Pictures don’t do them justice. But today, I thought to take a panning video of them, and by-golly, it did better to show the scale than I’ve previously managed erstwhile. That video is as well on the movies page, so hey – take a look, see if you’re impressed. It does a decent job showing the height, but it’s still a bit flaky about showing how truly massive they are around the base, too.

You still have to see them in person to believe it.

And boy do I have a story of frustration to go along with the videos of those trees, dammit. Just you wait; just you wait...

How to Cure Hiccups

I’ve seen too many people suffering needlessly. I have to share this. Look, if you’re suffering form hiccups currently, are you have in the past, or you think you may in the future… if they run in the family, perhaps you know someone that suffers; here’s how to cure hiccups. It works. Seriously, it works, you just have to trust me, and do as I say, to the letter. Hiccups are caused by a spasming diaphragm below your lungs. What you want to do it calm it. So here’s what you do:

1. Hyperventilate for a few seconds. Breath in deeply, rapidly (but not too rapidly). Warm your lungs up.

2. Now that the lungs are warmed, prepare yourself. Are you prepared? Good.

3. Take a deep breath, and then hold it. Now that you’ve just taken that deep breath, take in just a little bit more, and hold it.

4. OK so you’ve taken in a DEEP breath plus some, and you’re holding it. It’s a lot of pressure, I know. You probably feel it against your throat, right? Don’t worry. You only have to hold it for like 40 seconds.

5. Yes, 40 seconds. Dammit don’t argue, just do it. You can do it.

6. 1,2, skip a few… 40. OK, notice anything? That’s right, the hiccups are gone.

How does this work? I don’t know exactly. I learned from my dad when I was about 8 or 9 years old. It’s worked each and every time for me since then without fail, and it’s never failed anyone else that I’ve told it to. I think it has something to do with stretching the diaphragm out and keeping it like that, though I’m still notquite sure of the mechanics. Look, don’t worry about it, alright? But forget drinking a cup of water upside down with a wrench between your knees or something like that (don’t look at me like that; what you never had a crazy uncle?). Just take a deep breath + some, and then hold it for 30-40 seconds. Works every time.

And spread the word; random bob is full of useful, pertinent advice that will get you laid.