Holy Frick it does HD

The Panasonic camera that The Girl opted for arrived a couple of days ago. After a short stint of “charing the batteries” we began to play. The size is pretty nice, it’s not really too much bigger than her old crappy SD1000 that died just before mine died. Ahem. Anyway.

It’s the Panasonic Lumix model DM-TZ5. 10x optical zoom (as opposed to crappy, image-mashing digital zooms), Image Stabilization, a Leica lens… it’s got all the goodies it seems, so I wondered: could it suffice instead of another DSLR? So I’ve been playing around to experiment. Today I took the puppies out for a walk (What about Hunter, you ask? More later, but quickly, he’s getting better). The Girl left her camera here and along it went.

How does it stack up? Well with a 300mm equivalent lens, it’s got a good zoom to it. The pictures are of pretty good quality. There’s a little bit of softness when you look at the pictures 1:1 full-size, but at sizes you’re likely to look at them at, they’re pretty good. I’d have to say that it’s about 90% of what I want to make of my pictures.

But get this: Not only does it do still pictures pretty well, it also manages to do a rather charming job with video. It shoots 720p – that’s high-frickin’ Def, folks – at 30 frames per second. How awesome is that? The quality is so superior to the videos we had been taking with our previous cameras that looking back at them now is almost disgusting. What’s really cool is after having trained ourselves during the last year and a half with the Canons that you cannot zoom in while you’re shooting a video, it turns out, you can with the Panasonic, which is freaking cool. The only downside is that of course, the file sizes are quite a bit bigger.

But as always, it’s that last 5-10% that really gets me thinking. Do I really need a DSLR? I know I’ve had this argument before on these pages, but I’ve missed so many shots of recent – of Bald Eagles in the distance, other random wildlife pics – that I got to thinking that I needed a good zoom, and I needed a good DSLR. But with the arrival of the DMC-TZ5, I’ve found myself reliving the argument: do I need a DLSR? Do I need to carry around the bulk of a DSLR to get ‘decent’ images of far-off stuff?

Look, I know it’s always a trade-off. It’s just that the way I see it, the only really downside to the DSLR setup is its size; I’d have to carry a large body & large lens.

But the upsides? Well, that last 5-10%. And the manual adjustability that you can’t really get on a point & shoot. For instance, today I got this shot of two mallard ducks that sprang from the brush as I walked by:

click for a larger version

With the Panasonic, I pulled it up, hit the zoom button and waited, then held the shutter button down and waited as it tried to focus, and then got the shot. You can kind of tell it’s two birds. It’s not good. It’s not clear. Because the auto exposure fo the camera is trying to figure out what do to with the aperture & shutter speed to get a good image. It doesn’t know that we’re out in the wildness (sort of) and that we should probably set up to give priority to the shutter speed. It guesses. It guesses wrong in this case.

With a DSLR, I can set the mode to Shutter Priority. This means that in the above situation, subbing a DSLR for the super-zoom Point & Shoot, the ducks fly up, I raise the camera, ratchet the shutter speed up to stop-motion the action and let the camera modify the aperture as necessary to get proper exposure… I might have gotten the shot. In full, stop-motion, two-mallards-fleeing-post-haste beauty. Maybe.

Or maybe it was still out of focus. Or – and this is the one that really applies to me, I think – maybe the camera was so big I decided not to take it out on the walk with me. In which case, the situation would have gone like so: the ducks fly up, I reach for my ass, and scratch it as I curse myself for having not brought a camera with me to even capture the shot at all.

And I wonder – is the control (and extra 7x zoom or so due to the 1.6x crop factor of the DSLRs I’m shopping for) really worth the added costs, both literal & figurative? I mean cost-wise, we’re talking $700 for the camera, $1500 or so for lenses, as opposed to $250-350 for a camera like hers. Is that last 5-10% worth an extra $2,000? And then the size factor. Do I want to have to carry around – nay, lug around – a large-bodied camera with a large-bodied lens? Is it worth the extra $2,000 & the trouble of transporting/manipulating a DSLR to get that last 5-10% out of my shots that do nothing but sit on my Hard Drive?

Maybe. But, eh, Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and order this and be done with it.

311 hasn't been good in a decade

Have you heard this new song by 311, “Hey You?” Every time I hear it, I just can’t help but imagine some guy talking to his own penis. I’ve heard rock songs sing about a multitude of mundane and odd things, from the story of a guy that can’t sleep one night, all the way to a song about garage sales. But never a love ballad sung to one’s own penis. Until now, apparently. This whole song could be sung to an attached penis and be completely valid.

Which I guess is fitting, seeing as how 311 has become a band of penises. BOY their new music sucks. Gone are the glory days, eh guys?

Retire. Immediately. And take U2 & The Offspring with you.

Hunter out of commission :-(

I had plans today that it looks like I will, unfortunately, not get to. Poor Hunter. He’s been in such pain the last 12 or so hours, that I couldn’t get any sleep myself last night. Every time he tried to lay down there was severe yelping, so he spent most of the night propped up on my side of the bed with his head buried in me, part of the night attempting to lay down and yelping, and the other part just standing in the open, afraid to move.

Limber Tail. I’ve never known the name of it but I’ve seen it plenty of times before in Miles, and on an occasion in Chase as well. Known causes in my cases has typically been overexertion. But these guys, that’s not the case I assure you. I have the most-exercised, most active dogs ever. EVER. But from my own personal experience, the worst muscle injuries I’ve had were always under the most mundane of situations; perhaps he just “twisted” it funny or something, you know? Caught the muscle & nerves in the just right position at just the right time to really get himself into good bit of agony.

I hope he gets better soon. And I hope I can get some sleep before I have to get to work. Because I’m wiped.

California Supreme Court says "what equal rights?," upholds Prop 8

I’m not sure what to say about this verdict. Of course I’m not happy. I mean, I have no intention of ever getting gay-married, but I am all for equal rights. I’m just not sure how to convince the retarded fools (read: the public) that enacting legislation like this is actually bad for them, even if they don’t like homosexuality.

I think I’ve mentioned it before, that I do have an idea. Basically, we need to put a proposition on the ballot that would be just as erroneous, but serve the purpose of illustrating the slippery slope that is the withholding of personal liberties based on “not liking someone.” Maybe, you know, a proposition that aims to prevent catholics from marrying christians, or some other overly-absurd limitation of people’s right with no real reason to do so. Maybe something as silly as not allowing marriage between people with the same first letter in their first names.

That way when people complain that it’s just stupid to try and limit the rights of others just because you don’t like their names… well, it becomes precedent. Either they have to fight to overturn ALL illegitimate restrictions – including the ones they imposed on others – or suffer the fate of their own bigotry as well.

Good for the goose, good for the gander, or so I hear.

You know I honestly can’t believe we’re doing this song & dance again. We’ve been through this before, just substitute “black” for “gay.” Geez. Where’s a Chief Justice Earl Warren when you need one?

By the way? That guy is my hero. I’m serious. His moral latitude and his strength to make unpopular decisions just because they were right was absolutely remarkable. We nee more(s) of him(s).

Mesquite "Coals" are the new 'it' thing in my BBQ repertoire

On accident last trip to the grocery store, I grabbed a bag of BBQ-lighting goodness that was not quite what I expected. I grabbed a big bag of “on sale,” which I thought was a big bag of mesquite-flavored coals. However when I got home to start the BBQ, I reached in and grabbed a frekkin’ tree limb; It wasn’t a bag of mesquite-flavored coals, it was a bag of mesquite!

I was a little apprehensive, but a week into it and I must say that I think I’ll stick with it. It seems to light faster and is a little more reusable, both in the immediate sense & ecologically. Actual coals burn out pretty fast and you can’t just dump the ashes anywhere. Wood on the other hand, it lights faster, extinguishes better and relights better, and when it does finally cease to usefully exist, I can conceivably use it as a mulch base or… something.

And did I mention the flavor? Hell, the smell alone when I walk outside to check it is just awesome. If you have access, I suggest you try it.

I might have to start a small, personal mesquite tree farm in my backyard, myself. Keep out.

I may have to renege on the whole "No Canon!" thing

The Girl just purchased her camera, and it turns out that it’s a Panasonic, not the Nikon as mentioned in my last post. Not what we thought we were going to go with, but for the price and considering the options… well, she’s happy with the decision. Of course she has yet to use or even receive the thing, so we’ll so how it stacks up when it gets here. Today though, we did find a Brick & Mortar store that had the Nikon she was looking into. So we have an idea of what we’re comparing it to. Final decision to come within a week or so for her.

For me however, the decision has become a little more out-of-focus, to apply a photographer’s term in the most corny way possible to create an air of symbolism needlessly. A few days ago I lamented about Canon’s cruddy build-quality in their ELPH-series cameras. I figured on going with a Nikon at about the same price-point as the Canons I was familiar with. However in digging a little deeper, it would seem that the Nikons do not offer the same depth of features as comparably-priced Canons. For instance, I can get a Canon Rebel T1i with lens for about $850. It has 9 Auto-Focus points, shoots 15MP images and also manages to do HD video as well. To get into A similarly-equipped Nikon D5000 – or a D90 I hear is probably closer and more expensive – I’m either spending the same for less, or getting about the same camera at nearer to $1,000. And the video? Well, it leaves quite a bit to be desired in either Nikon model. Look here for a really good example.

I’ve had previous experience with Canon’s DSLRs. I never had a problem with them. I want to vote with my wallet, but dammit their upper-echelon stuff is good, and they offer more in a camera with less money in doing so. It’s hard to vote Nikon, even if their Image Noise suppression is a tad-bit better than Canon’s at the higher-ISO settings at this point.

So?

Who knows. Not I.

Why the Canon SD1000 is a Failure (with a Capital "F")

Yesterday MY Canon SD1000 bit the dust. Lo-and-behold, it was while in operation by The Girl. Note that the last time one of our Canon SD1000’s bit the dust, it was also in her possession. Evidence that she’s the one at fault? Sadly, no.

Since we’re down to a total of ZERO working, warrantied cameras in our possession, I figured “what the heck” and opened it up. Worst I could do was break an already-too-broke-to-function camera. Best I could do was possibly fix it.

Although the things have failed multiple times and I am no longer happy with them – nor have I been for quite some time – I must say that in taking it apart, I had to marvel at the feat of engineering that is fitting that much camera into that little a frame. Overall, bravo to the engineering whizzes that designed that.

click for a larger version

However, whoever made the decision to use plastic on the lens assembly and gears, a big F*CK YOU. You’re the main reason that the damned cameras fail so frequently and regularly. It’s plastic. It’s thin. It’s weak. When it comes across some foreign debris – be it even just dust – it will inevitably be the case that the debris is stronger than the plastic. What happens when you get miniscule bits of strong, foreign debris in the middle of weak plastic parts? The plastic gives way. It stretches like a pole dancer at the Strip Club, and scratches like sand in your crotch at the beach, and the plastic basically just becomes a deformed case of junk. So, reason #1 why the Canon SD1000 is junk, we have to list as “the decision to use PLASTIC for the lens & gear assemblies.”

Reason #2 is the fact that they decided against lubrication. Yes that’s right, Canon in all their infinite wisdom decided that lubricating delicate, precision, constantly-moving parts was a bad idea. Because we all know what happens when you do that: the moving parts tend to last longer and work more smoothly over their useful life. OK, so reason #2, we’re set on “decision not to lubricate moving parts.”

There’s a Reason #3, too. Has to do with tolerances. You see – or hell, maybe you don’t the pictures are kind of sh!tty, but more on that later – all of the parts of the lens simply slip into one another; slip-fits. The thing is for that to work, there has to be an entry port for each “nub” as well as the path itself. The way it’s designed, at full-stop the nubs are essentially sitting halfway in and halfway out of their pathway, so any little movement in any direction but one can easily cause the assembly to lock up. What they should have done was to make it so that the entry and end points were well outside of the ‘normal operating range’ of the mechanism to begin with, that way even with the lens at full-stop either way, all the parts are still safely stowed away in a controlled pathway. They didn’t do this. Hence, Reason #3 is “Lack of proper tolerances.”

Anyway, so that’s the story of me taking apart my Canon SD1000, “Super-Suck Edition.” There is of course the issue of what to do next. We need/want cameras. I may not be a math whiz, but it would seem to me like [Reason #1 + Reason #2 + Reason #3] = Buy a Nikon next time, which is looking likely. This is what The Girl is looking at currently. I’m looking at either that myself, or this, or maybe even this. Whatever it is, it’s going to be a “Not Canon!”

How did I get the pictures of the assemblies without another working camera? Easy. I do have a working camera. Sort of. It’s an Apple built-in iSight camera on my MacBook. I know they’re not that high-quality and they’re a little dark, but it’s meant for internet chatting not for photography, I’m just glad it will do in a pinch as needed. Heck if/when I do get a new camera, maybe I’ll update this post with better versions of these pics.

But I wouldn’t hold your breath on that. My couch is still not back together yet, either.

There you have it: All the reasons why the Canon SD1000 sucks, and probably why every other Canon ELPH model sucks. You know what, this is sort of an example of what I like about Apple. Yeah I know they don’t make cameras and this post had very little to do with Apple at all (if at all). But if they did make cameras, they’d have looked at the assemblies and said “to HELL with plastic gears & assemblies! Let’s use BIG-ASS F*CKING lasers to cut solid pieces of aluminum to fit!”

They build success, not failure. Canon...

HP Officejet J6480: first impressions

OK, now that the hatred is off of my chest… I gotta say that this printer – so far – rocks. It’s not the fastest, it’s not the sleekest, it’s not the most bestest ever I’m sure at a lot of things. But it’s wireless. Built-in wireless. Which means that the drivers for it are designed specifically for it. This may not make as much sense to you, so let me back up a minute:

We’ve been printing wirelessly for many years now. But it’s been a hack more than anything. We’ve basically just been running a standard USB printer to an Apple Airport Express Base Station, which for the most part bridged the gap between our wired/wireless world. But it wasn’t all 100% hunky-dory. Scanning wouldn’t work wirelessly, so we had to kludge up a wire system to plug in the computers when we needed to scan stuff. Also, the ink notification systems & head cleaning and – well, pretty much every other printer utility – would not work through the APEBS either. Basically, basic printing worked OK, everything else did not.

So now I can do it all wirelessly, which is hella-cool, as all the cool kids are saying these days. Print, fax, scan, it’s all there, even the utilities and maintenance stuff, all wirelessly. And it’s got some OCR stuff built-in as well, and it runs smoother than about any other OCR software/scanning system I’ve used before. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition; it basically allows you to scan in a document and then it “reads” the letters/words and puts that into a text document for you that you can edit and use. It’s also pretty cool.

So. Yeah. I like the printer and I like the scanning system as well. I just happen to distinctly hate their: 1) setup process, 2) 10,000 add-on programs that I don’t want, 3) desire to turn my Apple MacBook into a/an “HP officejet workcenter photo machine” and put like 20 icons to SH!T I’LL NEVER USE AND DIDN’T WANT all over my dock, 4) lack of documentation (like for instance, when you scan things it creates a folder in the Documents folder titled Scanner Output. This would be nice to know, so that people who wouldn’t think about these things would know about them. Hell at 4-7MB per scanned image those could add up fast and eat up a hard drive).

We’ll keep it, I guess. ;-)

Printers & Their software

We just bought a new printer. Our old one finally gave up the ghost and stopped feeding paper about 5 months ago. I know we’re late to the “get a new printer” party here, but with The Girl having quit school this last semester so we could have time to deal with the house thing (that didn’t materialize until just now, wouldn’t you know), it’s not like we had a big need to print much of anything. Anyway. On to the hate.

We bought a printer. An HP. For some unknown reason, HP (and every other printer manufacturer) seems to think that I want their device to take over my entire computer. I have to install the driver, but it goes ahead and installs all these other programs that take over my dock, that hide in different parts of the computer system, and generally suck and try to do everything that I bought a f*cking computer and the right software to do already.

F*cking f*ck. Look you dumbasses, I bought a printer. I want it to print, maybe fax & scan and such. That is all. Everything associated with your damn peripheral should be accessible from the utility in the Printer system preferences pane. EVERYTHING. ALL options. I bought a PERIPHERAL to my computer. YOUR item is periphery. Do you f*cking understand? I DID NOT BUY A/AN “HP PHOTOSMART SCANPRO HP WORKSTATION PRINTER CENTER UTILITY HP COMPUTER PRINTER MACHINE,” I bought a mother-f*cking Apple Computer and then accessorized it with a printer. That’s. it.

HOLY F*CK it’s annoying as hell to have to UNINSTALL ALL OF YOUR F*CKING UGLLY-ASS, CRAPPY-ASS SH!T-FOR-PROGRAMS FROM MY COMPUTER, so that I can simply use it to print & scan and NOTHING ELSE.

Phew. OK, now that the hatred is off of my chest... Let’s continue to the good stuff.

A Hairy Day at the Office. Or something

Tonight at work I turn around and see a ‘woman’ waiting to ask me a question. She was shorter, heavy-set, and hairy like no one’s business. I mean she was wearing a sun dress with a T-shirt underneath and I saw chest hair, not to mention she had more hair on her legs than I did and could have used a shave up around her – well, what I’m guessing would be her face area, and a face only a mother could lie and say she loved when in fact she vomits upon site a little in her own mouth. So she opens her mouth and utters:

“Excuse me, what aisle are your safe-sex products?”

[chirp chirp; chirp chirp]

Oh I’m sorry, were you guys waiting for a punch line? Yeah… sorry, this isn’t a joke, it really happened. But, I guess I could give you a punch line anyway. It’s not like I didn’t have a thought or two in my head at the time. One of which was “Tag, you’re IT, bitch.” I mean c’mon, who’s trying to mount sasquatch, really? She was as good a buzz-kill as anything I’ve ever seen. If she was the last woman alive I’d switch teams.

Crap, though. I guess that her asking meant that she was going to be getting some. And it makes me sad in a way, because eventually that means she’ll breed. And I know that sounds mean, but why is it that the ones producing the most offspring are the ones that we need to be purging the most in the first place?

Holy crap, I’m doing it again: against my better judgement, go watch Idiocracy, you’ll understand what I mean.

Blackmailed, divided by two

So this morning, Debt Recovery Solutions called. This is normal. I hear from them once every couple of weeks, sometimes a little more frequently. They’re the ones that had been tasked with collecting on the Sprint PCS account I had told you about a few days ago. They wanted to collect their $563…

I told them like I’ve been telling everyone involved since February of 2006: The disputed amount is not $563. That’s a lie they’ve been telling themselves. The amount in dispute is $300: the “early termination fees” that they charged me TWICE – once per phone on the family plan – that I refuse to pay. That I refused to pay because I only cancelled the contract with them because they could not perform on their end of the contract. You know, that pesky “phone service” I was paying them for.


Anyway. I explained the situation to the guy. This guy actually listened. Talked to his supervisor. Asked to split the difference. I said “no.” I talked to the supervisor. Explained the situation again. He relented and agreed with the assessment. Hell he’s got all of the paperwork right in front of him. And guess what? He accepted the offer to pay for the usage amount.

Done. Fín.

Now why couldn’t that have happened three months ago?

Is the internet & Cram sites encouraging cheating & Stupidity?

A New York Times Article examining whether or not online “study aides” are actually hurting the education of those who use them, basically helping/encouraging them to cheat. I have had a similar thought recently, when going to the internet for an answer.

You have to question, why is the answer on the internet accurate? Or rather, why would anyone bother to learn anything, if you can just “google it” and have the answer? How long until the knowledge is only held by one or two people? Or hell, no one? I took this example:

Say I look for an answer to a greywater installation issue. I type the query into google, and it links me to some yahoo answers forum where someone asked a similar question and someone answered it. See here’s the issue I have: we go to google to get answers to the questions. Right now say there’s 10 sites that answer the question because there’s 10 people that have done the legwork and figured it out. But say in a few years, since there’s an answer in yahoo answers forum that shows up on google as the first hit… well, we stop doing the legwork. Everyone just types it into google and accepts that answer. Now there’s just the one site with the question and everyone just diverts questions about it back to google which just links back to the one post, which is then I guess given “God Status;” it’s on google therefore it just is.

Who’s making sure that information is accurate? Who’s learning anymore? The internet was supposed to free the information and give it to everyone. But I think about it, and I feel like there’s a possibility we’re just leading ourselves down a path to common stupidity. “Google” will be the smarts, and whoever has the link on google will just be right, just because it’s on google. Go watch Idiocracy. Gaaaah… I can’t believe I’m recommending that movie. But watch it, and you’ll understand what I mean here.

House-Training & the pups: didn't jinx it

Yeah. I was almost positive when I wrote about it a week or so ago, that I had jinxed us by the mere mention of it. But I’m instead happy to report that we’re still destruction-free. With the exception of a tissue or two.

Yeah. Not sure, but for whatever reason they just can’t keep their mouths off of any snot-laden tissues they come across, no matter the punishment. They’ll mouth it right in front of you, the urge is so strong. I have no idea why. I just try to keep the tissues in a can that they can’t get into. If only The Girl was of as strong a conviction on the matter.

Anyway, I bring it up because today I figured to come home to some destruction. It was a great day outside: sunny, warm, and wouldn’t you know it but myself & The Girl both had to work this morning. I was sure that the pups would get antsy, and have to enjoy the day somehow, even if that meant mischief.

Nope. They’re lernin’!

Home-buying: our first snag

It’s my fault. Sort of. We’re being blackmailed – BLACKMAILED! – I tell you. Sprint & some “White overnite” company. Our credit union, our first choice for the loan, is saying that the PMI underwriters are probably going to deny our loan app because of these two collections accounts on my credit report. The total outstanding balance? $700.

Really, what the hell guys. Let’s put this in perspective: in the 16 months we’ve been banking with them, we’ve managed to rack up $20,000 into that account. In less than 20 months, we’ve saved $20,000 with them. Also in that time, we’ve: bought a brand-new, 2009 fully-loaded Tacoma; Bought two – not one, but two – brand-new laptops; adopted an additional two dogs; spend various amounts of money on things like Blu-Ray players, cameras, and apparently, sex toys.

Now paying the amounts “owed” is not a problem, financially. It’s a matter of principle.

“White overnite” is one of those “sign up and receive crap for free” scams that I forgot to cancel until after they charged my card. I cancelled after that though. They kept charging me. So, I had to go so far as to cancel my CARD, and then have a new one reissued with a new account number, because they kept charging my account regardless. Nice, huh? So, they sent me to collections, because they want $115 for the trouble of trying to charge my card.

The other is Sprint. As in, Sprint PCS. In early 2006 we cancelled our service with them. Wait let me back up. In late 2005 we changed from at&t wireless to Sprint. They had recently bought up Nextel, and I guess to celebrate they came out with some fabulous family plans. So we switched. Big mistake of course, right? No service. None at home. None at work. Well, intermittent. I’d say, 5-10% service. Every call was a dropped call. Usually right in the middle with no warning, followed by an ear-piercing beep in your… ear. They switched out phones, I went in again when that didn’t work to do something, the fed me a line about “bandwidth blah blah blah” and “let the phones adjust to the signal.” I’m sure you can guess what happened, no? Signal still not there. I went back later, a few days before the 30-day return period. They said to bring in the phones to the tech and he’d figure out what was up and fix it, because we should have a good signal. Cool.

Brought them in – now two days after the 30-day return period – to be told that the tech would only look at the phone for an additional $70. So. They couldn’t make their phones or rather their service work, and then wanted me to pay $70 to “look” at my phones. A little late I know, but I caught on to their game, and walked out and walked in to an at&t wireless shop to port the numbers back over.

And now? We’re being freaking blackmailed. How the hell can two illegitimate companies with illegitimate claims have such power over this transaction? I know that “technically” there’s two collections accounts on two of my credit reports. But crap… Seriously. These people need to stop thinking with pieces of paper and start thinking with their brains. Holy f*ck this is ridiculous.

This just in: We got the house

We got the call last night. From all people, the listing agent – yes, the one we weren’t ever supposed to call – that the negotiator for the bank said they had approved the sale. Yippee!

Crap we’ve only been waiting for god-only-knows how long. It’s about time.

Wait – we submitted our offer on January 16th, found out on May 12th… subtract the circumference of the earth, divide by zero… carry the remainder, I think it comes out to 116 days. Holy crap; I’m God. I freakin’ knew it.

Ahem. Anyway. So yeah. I guess it was meant to be, too. When we originally submitted the loan application, the rates were at about 5.3% with a point, today we walked in and they were offering – today only, they said – 4.8% with NO points. WOW. Our realtor, when I told him about how we were in a hurry to wrap up the loan app today, was so flabbergasted he said he might have to go get a loan and buy something just to take part in the fun.

Cool. Got the house. Now, we just have to drop some $20k in the span of a month. Wait, what? Crap.

The Mighty Taco stuck. Soon, a Lift & Tires, then... Winch. Yes.

Yeah it was true. Except, this time I don’t think we could have gotten ourselves out. We needed help. Which I guess means it was a good day to get stuck. More on that later, though. First let’s talk… er, I’ll talk you listen… about taking the truck down some tight paths and how fun it was!

Damn I guess I already said all about it already. Sh!t. Well here goes: We took the truck down some paths that we walked the time before to make sure we could “fit” down these areas, and not run into any pits that would swallow us. It was indeed tight, the truck was literally scraping by here, OK? At first I was like “The Girl is going to kill me” for putting scratches into a $30K truck. But she was OK with it after a minute or so. “it’s a truck, after all,” and she’s right. Plus it sounded worse than it was. I really couldn’t find any scratches to speak of.

So that was fun. Plus it was helpful to us to get over aversion to scratching the thing. It’s our trail truck, it’s gonna get scratched, right? Correct. So all good on that front. But crap, the mucky mud at this river strikes again. On the way out, we decided to go up an incline that maybe we should have avoided. It’s not that the incline itself was bad, it was more that the path to the incline was total muck.

Usually we might see some other trekkers out where we were today. It just so happens, that as we were gearing up to leave, we saw a couple of Tacomas headed out the entrance/exit to the river. One was set up nicely, bigger Mud-Terrains, a sheet-metal bumper, and most importantly, a winch. As it turns out, as we finally got everyone loaded to go and went a way we shouldn’t have gone and got stuck, the tricked-out Tacoma was headed back. Luckily I was able to flag the guy down (younger guy), and get his help to get me out of some pretty sh!tty sh!t with the help of his winch.

I thanked the guy a bunch of times & tried to talk them up (there were he & three other trucks, each with at least two guys), but they all seemed a little – I don’t know, standoff-ish I guess – though I’m not sure it wasn’t just that there was a girl there with me, who knows. Anyway, I did my part, so whatever.

Of course this site is like the Bible so there has to be a moral. Lesson learned? Get a lift. Get 33” Mud Terrains. Get a bumper & winch. Tell The Girl to “deal with it.” Lather, rinse, repeat.

US-Iranian reporter freed

I have been keeping tabs on this story, about a US-Iranian journalist who was accused & sentenced for spying. It would seem that the charges are probably baseless, as has been stated numerous times in the press by just about everyone in any administration.

Which I suppose might mean she’s actually the highest-level operative we have, who knows, right? It’s not like people come out and say “hey this is our top-secret spy, Frank, and he’ll be working inside your country for a while.”

Anyway. I bring it up because in reading today that she had effectively been released (figured that would happen), I came across this sentence:

”She had gone on a hunger strike in prison recently to protest her jailing but ended it after two weeks for health reasons.”

L.O.L. That’s dedication, folks. You can tell she thought that one through, eh? Wow.

The Dogs are finally "getting it"

I don’t want to jinx ourselves now, so you understand that I write this very, very cautiously. BUT, it would seem that after some vigorous beatings at the sight of wrongdoing & some lavish praise at the sight of a house still kept, Chase & Hunter have “figured it out.”

It’s been a good handful of weeks now that we’ve been “destruction-free.” if you will. No holes in the backyard, no chewed up rugs, no chewed up furniture (my poor couch still sits wounded). Crap at this rate, if the house never goes through, I’m starting to feel more comfortable about staying put and just saving some more $$ for things that I shouldn’t buy, like a new TV or new Taco lifts.

But again, I’m trying to keep from getting carried away. Jinxing, and all. Watch I come home tonight and they’ve lit the kitchen on fire using twigs & paperclips or something. Watch.

Dolason Prairie Trail: A seccond go

This most recently passed Wednesday, me & The Girl set out to try the Dolason Prairie Trail for ourselves. I had done this trail with a gent I met online a month or so ago, and was telling her that she’d really enjoy it, especially the views. Was I right? Well, she said I was.

Of course she lies to me all the time so who really knows.

I am glad, at times like these, that I’m not a popular personality, and that a very few people actually stop by www.randombob.net, most of those being family/friends. Why? Because I hate the thought of these pristine places being whored out because I talked about them and ‘made them popular.’ However with such lack of popularity myself, I don’t foresee that as a problem.

I’ll save you the details, and just say that yes, we enjoyed it, yes we just took the young pups, and yes, I put up a gallery of some pictures. Please enjoy them. And hey, you should thank me, too. Between me & The Girl, we snapped some 200 pictures on this 5-½ hour journey. I managed to whittle it down to a mere 23 that you have to suffer through.

There, that’s not so bad, now is it? :-D

I thought I was the only one: Post-micturition convulsions

I had no idea it was so widespread. According to wikipedia, some 83% of male respondents polled said they experience them. “Pee Shivers.”

I thought I was the only one! I thought I was the only one… Didn’t have any idea that it was more widespread than the ‘bob until this very afternoon, when video chatting with a friend who asked me of I myself get them; they just were listening to the radio where it was the subject of discussion and next thing you know I’m being asked. Why yes, yes I do. And now it’s both very relieving (pun only a little intended) to know that I’m not the only one that gets that uncontrollable, spine-tinging urge, whilst at the same same time a tiny little bit depressing. I guess I’m not special after all… :-(

Oh well. I guess I always sort of knew I wasn’t special. Always out of someone’s league, ay?

Eagle Eye

Yeah I know, I just got through ripping sh!t lebarf up a few days ago, and here I am, watching a movie that he stars in. What gives? Two words: Michelle. Monaghan. Well not really. I mean, yeah she’s pretty, but I don’t actually watch movies because of whether or not I think a leading lady is hot.

That only matters if I’m watching porn.
...Okay, moving on.

It looked mildly intriguing. I didn’t expect much. I didn’t get much, so I guess my expectations were in line with reality more or less. It was better than I thought though, most of it. It’s just that when the end finally comes, you realize that the rest of the movie that preceded it was kind of silly.

It’s not a complete and utter waste of film (Michelle. Monaghan), but you can do better with two hours. How is the movie really? It’s basically I, Robot only not as good. Just go rent I, Robot instead and then look at pretty pictures of Michelle Monaghan online somewhere. It’ll be a better-spent two+ hours.

Added bonus? No Sh!t Lebarf.