Home made waffles (Soy-flour and Cinnamon), real maple syrup and fresh strawberries.

My Breakfast PWND!!!!111oneoneone~

Since we're on the topic, I'mma let it fly (lunch break, and then I swear its GBTW,YFS... I'm behind behind behind schedule, a.k.a. behind^3 schedule)

GRILLS
1) Memorial day- as long as weather permits we gotta do some grilling. I've got a dinky charcoal'r. If worse comes to worse I'll buy some real lump charcoal and flame that baby up.( do I need a starter chimney?) No more kingsford.

however my wife wants a gas grill. Not looking to break the bank, but I also don't want something thats "Teh Suck." Recommendations?

MEATS
so I tried that skillet-broil thing. I don't have a cast iron skillet (I need to get one thats porcelain lined so it won't scratch the cooktop) but thats not the problem. I think I bought the wrong meat. TopRound. yeah, uhm, it was tougher than leather. Should I just stick with Filets and Manhattan Strips? What meats good for what?

Thank you for your sch00lingz. Now get back to work, you freakin' slacker!

So I always thought that the Stick was an offbeat, wacky, zany, cuckamunga-crazy invention of the brothers chaps.

This weekend, I feel 95% confident that I have found their inspiration for the stick. For I now have my own, "Teh Stick" [NOTE: I meant to take pictures, but I didn't do it. Perhaps another day].

So as many of you know, we have a yard that has straw, a bit of grass here and there, and lots of nothing else. 'Cept dirt. So we've decided to plant some crap. And the first thing that came was the dogwood tree.

Dogwood tree? No, 4 foot stick. ITs a friggin' STICK. and given the weird root structure, when buried, its a 3 foot stick. With no leaves. Just a stick.

So I needed to dig a ditch that was a least a foot deep. But the instructions* (yes, I'm such a nerd-o, that I need instructions for a frickin' tree.) recommend that I dig a hole much much wider than it is deep. Additionally, my soil is TEH SUCKS. It is RED CLAY. you don't dig up patches, you slice off sections and it comes out looking like rocks. FOr both drainage purposes and for space for the roots to grow I had to dig waaaaaay out.

Lemme tell ya. Ditch digging? Not as fun as I had anticipated. Nope. I put in an hour on Friday night.

And continued on into saturday. While digging I felt like an archaeologist because I kept uncovering trash left in this yard by the developers of the cul-de-sac (heh! He said cul!) across the way. THIS explains my asphalt mound in the back-back yard! I found glass, rubber tubing, plastic tubing, aluminum siding, asphalt shingles/tar paper, and a 4 inch metal pipe* (I dug out about 4 feet of it, but it kept on going so its still in the ground)

I spent about 5-6 hours on this on saturday.

Because the digging took so long I tried to keep the roots dressed with wet sphagnum (new favorite word). But I don't think I did a good job. One of the roots snapped off with gentle handling. I can only assume they got too dry.

Sunday morning comes and I look to the left to see the fruit of my efforts: A frickin' stick in the ground. With brittle roots, crappy soil, and a pile of detritus.

  This thing better live. I'm totally not doing this again.

Can't connect the Visor Neo to the mini [insert Howell joke about how "of course the mini can't recognize morse code over cable"]

Just sent an E-mail to Apani to see if their VPN software works on Tiger. otherwise, I'll be stepping down to panther.

Bleeding edge my ass.

Oh shit- doesn't support the VPN, either. Goodbye, TIGER.

That is right, the DC metro area has edged out Atlanta in terms of having the worst traffic. We're still trailing to little burgs in Cali, though.

According to WaPo:
Only the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas have worse traffic than Washington. This year's big mover was Atlanta, which debuted in the "very large" city category at number four, just a notch below Washington. There is hope for those inclined to see things in a perverse sort of way: Washington cut in half the lead San Francisco holds on the claim to second worst.

So I need a lawnmower, and I need a lawn.

Oh I have some grass, and a bunch of weeds. But its not a lawn.

But I've got to cut whats there.

I'm leaning towards a Toro Personal Pace mower; but I'm enthralled by the B&D Cordless Electric.

Basically, its a battery powered mower. You charge it, it cuts. No loud gas engine. No oil and gas maintenance. Just sharpen the blade, charge the battery, and yr off.

But the reviews are not encouraging. They say its okay. They say that the battery looses charge after a few years. Replacement battery is $140 (I've seen laptop batteries cost twice that...fwiw).

I dunno. I'd like to be all future-sensitive and battery powered and quiet, but... does it make sense?

I've alread got another gas-powered outdoor tool ('Teh Two Stage Snow Thrower of DEATH') and I'm sure I can prolly use the same oil for it (0 weight).

And I'm pretty sure that the electric mower would give out in the middle of doing the lawn; so I'd have to do it in two stages.

So I dunno. Any thoughts?

In the meantime, I need to figure out how to plant grass. Due to the very real possibility of selling this house and moving elsewhere, I need to ensure curb appeal of the house. This is best accomplished by turning that stupid mud pit into a LAWN.
And I have no idea how to do that. So that should be groovy.

Oh yeah- To Be Ordered today: Mac Mini. hells yeah.

EDIT EDIT EDIT

This JE is officially Closed. With Em Emalb the declared winnar.

Opened Garage door at 6:45.
crabbs branch->Gude Dr->28------------>95->395->pratt->victory lap around Legg Mason bldg.

Total time: 1 hour 10 minutes.
Pretty much my target time.
BUT... I wish I could do better. That 1.17 hours includes blasting away on 95.

I wish 28 was a bit faster... or two laned.

Its got me thinking about dun dun dunhhhhh 495. And also dun dun dunnhhhhhhh 270! . Or maybe snaking down 97 to hit 495...

however I don't know if snaking down 97 would buy me anything.

and 270 South (Even at 6:15 am... a half-hour earlier) may not be worth it without HOV.
Mebbe we'll try it next week.

THANKS TO ALL WHO MADE THIS CHRONOMETRIC BREAKTHROUGH POSSIBLE. I couldn't have done it without your knowledge.

The Ol' Goat face killa.

It went something like this;
at 6:30 on the frickin' dot, 124 to brink road/sundown to 97 to 70 to 40 to light street by 8:00 am.

Damn. An hour and a half.

We may try tinkering with the above route (more time on 70?) but I'm thinking 495-95-395..., what could possibly go wrong?! (or maybe taking 28 across to 95...)

The government directed consumers to the Web for more information on the new food pyramid. But what about those who still don't have Internet access?
  - Robert MacMillan: You are what you click (WaPo...registration, blah blah)

The obvious answer: "The internetless will remain fat and miserable."
Just like the internetted.
Thank you for your time.

So, to re-cap a post I made in Bl1nder's JE...

Gaithersburg to Baltimore by 8am this Friday morning: What time do I leave?

Don't want to take the subway in- I don't know it.

270-70 (*I'm assuming 270 Northbound is gonna be much faster than taking 27 or Georgia (97), but correct me if I'm wrong)

Then I should take 40 to Light Street *(weaseling down St Paul)... but take it directly from 70? Or take it from 695? (or did Blinder say 'avoid west side of 695 like the plague?)

And is this faster than 270s to 495 East to 95 N to 395?

I hate everything. I hate MP3s. I hate iTunes. I hate winamp playlists. I hate Organization. I hate harddrives. I hate new harddrive partitions. and I hate you, too.

The set up is typical- my MP3 collection grows in fits and starts. I use 1 program for 13 cds...then stop. That did a heirarchical structure of Artist, album, then songs. I download albums (*ahem, legally, of course. Emusic, et al) and organize them by folders. My current fav mp3ripper just throws 'em all in a folder, let gord sort 'em out.

And occaisionally I want to do some organization and I move things around. Or I get a new, spacious harddrive and want to move all my music there.

And moving files around a filesystem is TEH KISS OF DEATH.
My playlists break. I can't burn CD projects that I've saved, because the links don't resolve. iTunes doubly lists everything and isn't smart enough to figure out what is or isn't a duplicate.

I'm at the point right now where I want a relational file-system. Tell MP3 playing program and CD burning program the "unique file id keys" that they want, have them "ask" the OS for it, and have the OS do some magic underneath. Thats it.
Then I want a "view" program. Allows me different slices of the files I have. It would theoretically support having 18 different folder/file heirarchies, because they are all logical fabrications.

Either that, or I want a SMART Music content management system. It "hashes" the mp3. If the mp3 moves, it asks me if I want to find it, then goes out and FINDS it.

So how the fuck do I do this?!?!?!?!

Windows is a complete loss. Once OS X Tiger comes out, I'll mini-mac. That means I'll have an opportunity to migrate anew (i.e. create new playlists and such) and I'll have access to Teh-unixness for maximum programming gumption.

I'll use whatever tools that I can compile for OS X which are k00l and k-rad, and I have no fear of hacking them to bits (i.e. storing whole mp3s in postgres* (or links to mp3 locations, along with artist, title, and track info) and then writing a file-system API that does the DB key to file-link conversion under the covers, and then modify lame and any other mp3 playing/burning list management to use that)

But how do y'all do it?

EDIT

While writing this, I guess Apple just mentioned TIGER uppercut is releasing. I suppose that means its Mac-mini time.

Maybe this was just in the movie version (its been years) but I thought at the end the pro-book society folks each memorized a book. So they each WERE a book.

So for the meme- Not that you are some piece of paper that burns easily... but that you can recite the book for days, like some Norse Saga (ooooooh! A Norse Saga! That'd be fun to "be").

Which is why I told Seilwolf I wanted to be a Bukowski book- for maximum effect, you'd have to get me drunk before I recited it to you! ;)

I could always pick "Be Here Now" by Baba Ram Das, which would be a gaurantee of my own enlightenment.

Ahhhh, who am I kidding. I'd be almost any book by De Sade. But of course.

As for last books bought: "Wapshot Chronicle", "Maltese Falcon", "Moon is a Harsh Mistress", "Beneath the Sheltering Sky", "Look Homeward Angel" (multi-purchase from Amazon)

last book read: "Maltese Falcon"- sorry, I realize its a vital part of the canon, but reading from a 2005 perspective it fucking sucks. Its all textbook hard boiled. Sure, it IS the seminal text book, but its played out. However, My wife totally dug it.

Current Read: "Wapshot Chronicles"- I've got like, 4 pages left!

Desert Island Books:
"Neuromancer".
I read it over and over, I listen to it on CD (as read by the author, with incidental music by U2) and I NEVER get tired of it.

"Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"- great writing, great story, wierd times.

"Flow: the psychology of optimal experience"- sometimes its nice to re-indoctrinate yourself.

My Ol' Fields, Matter, and Waves text book- I'd like to re-capture the glory of deriving Ohm's law from Maxwell's equations (that whole "Magnetic Current" fabrication to make the math work? CRAZY!)

"Zen and the art of motorcycle maint"- I'm not 100% on this book, but I can't think of anything else and my lunch break is about to be over.

Playing off of JtS, This is my iTunes list:

...

Yeah, so I don't run iTunes as it screwed me over a while back on my PC and I've been using WinAmp (which really whips the llamas' ass) instead.

I suppose when I get a mac I'll me forced to assimilate and use iTunes... scary.

Your turn to FOTOKON.

P.S.- I hate slashdot and its fucking limits bullshit.

P.P.S.- if you have MOD POINTs- please MOD DOWN my top level posts done at +1 for karma.

And to that wisenheimer who modded UP my request to get modded down... Nice 1!

P.P.P.S.- Dewd, YUOU ARE POSTING AT 0. No one can READ that shit. Come back when you've shaved, son.