Download Of The Month!

Google Earth - Home: "Google Earth - Explore, Search and Discover

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips."

Amazing Program!! Free!! You will spend hours playing with this I promise!

Time To Update Your Vacuum...

iRobot's Latest Robot Cleans Around Your Schedule; iRobot Roomba Scheduler Can Be Programmed to Automatically Clean Once a Day:

CHICAGO --(Business Wire)-- June 24, 2005 -- iRobot Corp. today introduced the iRobot Roomba(R) Scheduler Robotic Floorvac, a robot that automatically vacuums floors on a schedule you set. The latest addition to iRobot's popular line of Roomba Discovery Robotic Floorvacs includes built-in scheduling technology that allows people to program the new robot to clean floors at a certain time each day, seven days a week. "

Happy Birthday Fest Takes A Dark Turn!

The Sunday Birthday banner holds a dark tale of Birthday horror! You have been warned!

Birthday Archive For Saturday

Birthday Archive For Friday

Here is the Friday Birthday song in case you missed it.

Old ATV Trailer Is Gone...

We said Goodbye to the old ATV trailer this week. When we first became interested in riding and then buying an ATV we thought one was going to be more than enough. We soon learned that it is much better to have two! After picking up the new trailer last weekend that can haul both Quads, we decided to sell the old one. I provide this shot from the archives to pay respect for the 2 good years the old trailer gave us.

Gas Station Owner Cashes in $1.4M Pennies

Gas Station Owner Cashes in $1.4M Pennies: "Edmond Knowles started out saving pennies in a 5-gallon can. Thirty-eight years later, he was storing them in four 55-gallon drums and three 20-gallon drums _ nearly 1.4 million in all."

Birthday Archive For Tuesday

Here is the Birthday tune for June 22nd archived in case you missed it. The song for today can be heard by clicking on the Birthday Banner in the upper right corner of the Blog.

One Week Until Deb's Birthday!

Be sure to click on the banner each and everyday until the BIG day for a tune! All birthday wishes can be entered in the comments section below this entry.

Blondestar!

Rough Night!

Ahhhhh, the joy of alcohol! Found this on the net and thought it was funny. Note: No paper left on the roll either!

Found on the net.

Summer Moon Illusion

Summer Moon Illusion: "Sometimes you can't believe your eyes. This week is one of those times.

Step outside any evening at sunset and look around. You'll see a giant moon rising in the east. It looks like Earth's moon, round and cratered; the Man in the Moon is in his usual place. But something's wrong. This full moon is strangely inflated. It's huge!

You've just experienced the Moon Illusion.

Sky watchers have known this for thousands of years: moons hanging low in the sky look unnaturally big. Cameras don't see it, but our eyes do. It's a real illusion. "

New ATV trailer...

We finally have a trailer that will haul both Quads! The tall fence looking sides drop down to form ramps, so you can load and unload from either direction.

A Rick Pic

Summer Is Finally Here!

Spent Sunday reclaiming the yard from the hip high weeds! If you squint you can almost imagine that it is a lawn!

A Rick Pic

Bad Boy!

Someone I know has a new toy! Since this individual has a bit of trouble updating their own blog, I thought I would help them out and showcase it here.

Note: Clean tires? Was this thing airlifted in? Does it fly? Real ATV's have dirt on them... that's all I'm gunna say 'bout that!

A Tad Damp Downstairs...

Last week I headed downstairs and noticed that it was very damp feeling and kind of musty smelling. After doing a little research I discovered that this is common in basements. So... Dehumidifier to the rescue! This bad boy can suck 40 pints of water out of the air every 24 hours. And... It has, for the last 5 days straight! The change is amazing, but sadly, I will now have to start watering the plants again.

A Rick Pic

Not One Damn Mouse... Yet.

Still waiting for someone to fall into my trap! For those not in the loop, we had a small army of field mice enter the house in the last few weeks. Actually, a total of 3. From where, we have no idea. Each one of these were quickly dealt with by the cats. With that said, I have set up an outer perimeter to try and stop the invasion before they get in the house. For those concerned about the d-CON and any interaction with the cats, relax. I have only put the d-CON under the house in the crawl spaces, where only really sneaky mice could get to it. The Ketch-All (a live capture box) is out in the garage.

A Rick Pic

Travel Photo

Mount Shasta. I shot this last week while driving back from Redding California.

A Rick Pic

Three Days Off...

Here it is early Saturday morning and I am up at 3:30am! This seems to be the new thing for me, up for about an hour and then I fall back to sleep. The choice I have to make is, lay in bed and roll around for an hour, or get up and do something. Well since I don't have to work today, I have decided to do some blog updating.

I took Friday off and played catch-up on many put off projects. Such wonderful chores as: Trip to the dump. Powerwash the ATV's (Can you say mud covered!), Take the Jeep to DEQ and then get tags, and the continuing and almost done job of, empty a few more boxes out of the garage.

The trip to the dump consisted of crap from the old house that we finally had the strength to get rid of. Things we had not used for 10 years but still had to quickly throw into the trailer, or we would change our minds. This feeling was so strong that I had to do the same thing when I actually got to the dump just to get it out of the trailer! Funny how that works.

Of course this weekend would be a great time to start on the yard, but due to the never ending rain this year, the yard is still far too wet to start on. I used to think the weeds were big in the old yard... I was wrong. There seems to be strange forces at work here in the country. Some of these things are huge! Oh, and if anyone ever wanted a private endless supply of blackberries? We got em! Deb says she is ready to provide berry cobblers, if I pick the berries. I'll be there.

Blast From The Past!

Well, in case you ever wondered what I might have been doing 15 years ago, here is your chance. Back in 1990 and 1991 I and a friend had an online Humor Magazine. Back then, we are talking before the internet people, there were things called BBS's. These Bulletin Board Systems were where you went to swap files and interact with other nerds. The only problem with the BBS concept was that only one person could be on the BBS at a time! I would type something, log off, someone else would get on and type a reply, I would log on and read the reply. This was all done over a 300 baud modem! To get an idea of the speed of this very high tech item (and expensive I might add, over $200 dollars 1990 for the first ones!) I could type faster than it could send and echo back! I would type a sentence and then sit back and watch the letters appear on the screen! Later on some really fancy BBS sites would let 10 or more people be online at a time, but these usually cost money. Anyway, Owen and I would scour Usenet and gather as many jokes as we could. (Usenet is considered to be a precursor to the internet and is now commonly referred to as News Groups Feeds) We would take the jokes we found, edit them and release a printable, ready for download, version we called the "BBS Humor Digest". We kept this up for a year and a half and even received letters (remember, before email too) from around the world from people who looked forward to reading this thing! After doing a Google search I found some issues still posted on the net and I provide a link above for your reading pleasure.

Have fun, and remember... Don't Screw Up The Punch Line!

This Is Sad...

DVD Decrypter - Gone, Forever!: "Hello world,
I've got some good news and some bad news.Let's start with the good.... (tumble weed passes by) Ok, and now onto the bad: DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0 is the last version you'll ever see.We hoped this day would never come, but it has, and I can promise you, nobody is more gutted about it than I am."

Click link to continue story...

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena: "These pages demonstrate visual phenomena, called "optical illusions" or "visual illusions". The latter is more appropriate, because most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye. I selected these based on relative novelty and interactivity. I will expand the explanations when I find the time, to the degree that these phenomena are really understood. Any nice and thoughtful comment welcome."

Greetings From Redding California!

Well here I sit in my fine 'La Quinta' hotel room digesting a Big Mac sitting in a really uncomfortable chair wishing I was home... Again! I often wonder at times like this, what I was thinking when I chose this career path! Lots of people only stay in hotel rooms when they go on vacation! I shudder to think what my life total of hotel room nights would be if I actually added them up. I know I have at least spent an entire year of my life sleeping in a hotel room somewhere on this planet! Jesus! That is 365+ unwrapped bars of little soap!

The weather has been sunny and hot here with a pretty strong wind from the North. Job wise, everything is on auto pilot, so mental stimulation is hard to come by. I stopped by the book store and grabbed some new reading material on the way home, so I'll dig into one of those tonight.

I will take this moment to pass on a Hotel Tip from a veteran of living out of a suitcase. When checking in, you might be tempted to take a room on the lower floors because you don't want to haul your heavy luggage any further than you have too. WRONG! Number one rule, is get on the top floor. In the usual business traveler hotel, this is the 3rd or 4th floor and is really not that much work to get to. The logic here is that the up all night, door slamming, TV cranked on high, shooting the shit with the drunk buddies, wrestling on the floor, running children until 2am assholes will be below you and not right over your bed! Though I have no scientific data to back this next statement up, let me say that sound in hotels ONLY travels down. I know, it is strange but true, that all of the above mentioned noise will not even be noticed by you as long as you are above it. There you go!

Now for the Hotel bitch of the night... Every one of these places puts the Air Conditioner so that it blows directly onto the fancy internet enabled, two line phone adorned, placard covered desk that is your only source of enjoyment since there is nothing but crap on TV. This forces you to turn off the A/C while you work on your computer, and while in California, in the summer, this usually results in a quite warm room within a short time. I think you get my point.

Spybot Search and Destroy v1.4

FileForum Spybot Search and Destroy: "Spybot Search and Destroy searches your hard drive for so-called spy- or adbots; that is, little modules that are responsible for the ads many programs display. Many of these modules also transmit information, including your surfing behavior on the Internet. If it finds such modules, it can remove them. In most cases the host still runs fine after removing the spyware/adware. "

Go get your update now!

Who Is The Tallest?

A cool website that compares the worlds tallest buildings.