Is is just me, or does absentee ballots (and for that matter, early voting) use seem to be on the upswing?

And what's funny, it seems to be mostly for the wrong reasons. Listening to NPR this morning there was a story where they briefly interviewed about 3 individuals who had applied for absentee ballots. The tone I got from the interviews was that they were voting absentee because 'the polling times were inconveniant' and 'I don't want to stand in line for 2 hours'.

Sorry, but voting is one of those small prices we pay for being a democracy. Having to get up an hour earlier in the morning to go vote, or having to stand in line shouldn't be an issue, it should be something you take pride in as an American.

I know that there are valid reasons why people vote absentee but a lot of people out there seem to be taking advantage of the system and voting absentee not because getting to the polls on election day would be difficult/impossible but because it's simply too inconveniant.

My wife is heading on over to Sears this morning and buying the gas-powered leaf blower that I've always wanted.

Leaves beware. Should be a fun weekend.........

email me at macbrave_at_gmail.com if interested....

This past weekend we helped our friends move. They moved from a small ranch into a 130 year-old, 2 story Victorian.

This got me thinking. For my entire short 37-year life the houses I've lived in have all been 50+ years old. Now this doens't count college dorms or apartment complexes.

I grew up in an approximately 100 year-old house (my parents still live there). For about a year during my college years myself and 3 friend rented a 50+ year-old house. While living in Michigan we lived in aparment complexes or townhouses. We currently own a 75+ year old house.

Of course old houses have their 'challenges' compared to new homes. Stuff like non-level floors and ceiling. Old electrical wiring (recently installed new outlets and switches in our kitchen. Three different types of wiring was found) and plumbing. Big, cast-iron floor registers and fresh-air return in the floor instead of the walls. Old drafty windows. The list can go on and on.

But IMHO the atmosphere, detail, and workmanship showned in many older homes put most newer homes to shame. We simply love the woodwork, hardwood floors, and high ceilings. The leaded glass windows. The french doors. The built-in linen closet upstairs. The quirky 'secret door' in my son's bedroom that leads up to the attic. Again the list can go on and on.....

So, what are your takes on older vs. newer homes?

Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner . If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email moderation@slashdot.org with your MD5'd IPID and SubnetID, which are "4e499d323eaf2b4cdaa4781a082a6642" and "09cc152cc712bf3c71144e519a0d5876" and (optionally, but preferably) your IP number "XX.XXX.XXX.XXX" and your username "MacBrave".

Working in a organization with 2000+ others on the same subnet, with at least 1 troll who ruins it for others, sucks sometimes. And I've tried emailing moderation@slashdot.org with no response.

The weekend was a pretty good one:

Friday night went to the drive-in movie. The double-feature was Harry Potter: PoA and Catwoman. We went just to watch Harry Potter and left after it was over.
We are fortunate to have a drive-in only about 10 minutes away. It's not big or fancy, a lot of the speakers don't work (everybody listens on their car radios anyway) but otherwise is well maintained. It's 15$ a carload and most everybody brings lawn chairs, blankets, junk food, drinks, etc. Just a good family evening.

Saturday: In the morning got the oil changed on the new van, then went over to my parents to visit. My sister, who lives in Italy, and her husband (an Italian) were back visiting. They just got married in May so have the big 'newlwed' thing going on. It's always good to see them and we have a good time just playing dominoes (this seems to have become the family game lately, trumping euchre), riding bikes, having squirtgun fights, or just hanging out.

Sunday: Ran the video at the early church service, then helped my wife teach Sunday school. After lunch cut down a big limb in the backyard that was starting to touch the house.

Spent some time playing City of Heroes. This is a pretty good MMOG IMHO. I currently have a 8th level science/tanker named 'Super Froob' (my son's idea) and a 4th level mutation/blaster called 'The Carrot Avenger' (my idea). Yesterday joined the tanker up with a group for the first time. Did pretty well, although did get killed when we bit off more then we can chew. Oh well, live and learn. And I haven't gotten tired of the 'leveling treadmill' as some call it. At least not yet....

I started back to work on 7/11 after a two week vacation. At least I thought it was a vacation......

To me a 'good vacation' means during the period that you are 'off work' at least 50% of said period should be unplanned time. Nothing on the schedule.

It wasn't so for this last vacation.

June 27th-June 30th: Trip to Holiday World. Holiday World is a great little amusement/water park in southern Indiana. There is an adjoining campground, Lake Rudolph, where we shared a cabin with my sister's family. My parents came as well, but they stayed in their 5th wheel camper.

Even though HW is a great place, boy was it crowded! We went on a Monday hoping to avoid some of the crowds but to no avail. The waterpark is especially busy. The kids and I still manager to ride some pretty cool water slides like Zinga and Junger Racer. Also messed around in the wave pool and lazy river. Then we rode a few rides in the park and headed back to the campground for dinner.

After dinner we headed back for some coaster riding. HW has two of the best wooden roller coasters around in The Raven and The Legend. We rode the Raven right at dusk and although a little short was a great ride. With the park due to close in about 10 minutes we got in line for the Legend. This coaster at night in fantastic! Lots of twists, turns, and airtime.

July 1st: Spent most of the day home relaxing, although did get packed and ready for Cub Scout Camp.

July 2nd-3rd: Went to Cub Scout camp with my 7-year old. Had a good time, but we left Saturday night due to rain getting in our tent.

July 4th: Fireworks, what else? Also celebrated Logan's 1st birthday.

July 5th-6th: Spent more time relaxing, although did a few odd jobs around the house and got packed and ready for Webelos Adventure Camp with my older son.

July 7th-10th: Went to Webelos Adventure Camp with my 9-year-old and five other scouts. Had a great time, although by Saturday morning everyone is ready to come home.

July 10th: Ran the video during church. Marched in the county 4-H fair parade with the scouts. In the afternoon went over to the parents to fix a computer problem.

July 11th: Back to work, and a chance to relax!

Had a pretty good weekend. Here's the highlights:

Friday night
    - Little league baseball game. Trevor's team lost again, but everybody seems to be having fun regardless. His team has really good coaches who continue to coach and encourage the players. Unlike some of the other teams, a couple which are coached by IMO borderline assholes who rant, rave, and criticize even when their team is up by 10+ runs. Yeesh, this is minor league, little league baseball!

Saturday -
    Went over to the parents in the morning with three of the boys. We drove (I should say my Dad drove) us around for a while in the new minivan. We visited the resovoir (sp) near their house and watched the torrent of water coming from the spillway due to all the rain we've been having. The older boys thought it was neat, although Logan slept thru most of it.
Got home around 4pm and then at 6pm had some Webelos scouts and their families over to make tie-dyed t-shirts and talk about scout camp coming up in a couple of weeks.

Sunday -
    Ran the video announcements at church. Got to see our new pastors in the pulpit for the first time. I think they are going to work out just fine. Our new senior pastor likes to preach barefoot (gasp!) and is a woman to boot (double gasp!). For a UM church this can be pretty radical.....
    In the afternoon, took Evan to a band camp south of Indy. He'll be there until Friday, but a lot of his friends are going so he should be fine and have a lot of fun. On the way home ate dinner with friends.

That pretty much sums up the weekend. Now this week we'll be busy with Trevor's baseball tournament, then packing and getting ready for the trip to Holiday World on Sunday. Also count in two scout camps and my two-week vaction starting on the 27th is pretty much booked......
 

Well the luck I mentioned about a new van in the previous JE was needed. The wife talked back-and-forth with the salesman about a dozen times on Friday before sealing the deal.

We are now the proud owners of a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT. Has a lot of bell and whistles, and we like the color as well.

Coupl of pics here

Anybody else looking at new wheels?

If all goes well, the wife and I should be buying a new car by the end of the day.

We've had our eye on a 2005 Grand Caravan SXT at a local dealer for about a week now. It's a nice van, although I probably won't get to drive it much. That's OK, because I still have the '95 Wrangler. :)

 

It appears that due to the recent slashcode upgrade I have unlimited mod points. At least after I mod a post and then go back to my homepage it seems to reset back to 5.

Anybody else getting this?

Not much to talk about. Too busy. Maybe later....

This was the first weekend in quite a while where we didn't have an overwhelming list of things to do. So it was quite relaxed, relatively speaking...

Saturday
---------
* went to a few garage sales in the morning, until it started raining.
* Trevor's baseball practice - rained out
* Griffin's soccer game - rained out
* messed around with my old 450mhz box. I have it dual-booted with win98 and Fedora Core. The video card was acting strange under win98 so I tried to fix it. Ending up have to reload win98, but still didn't fix the problem. I think I'm going to pitch the dual-boot and run linux-only.
* Read a book
* fixed the flat tire on Griffin's bike
* Last week a friend gave me shoebox containing about 10 Atari 2600 games. Since I don't have a 2600 I thought I would have go searching for one (hence the aformentioned garage saling), but then I remembered the same friend about a year ago gave me an Intellivision 2 with one of those 'system changer' modules that plays 2600 games. So I pulled out the whole messed and voila! It worked. Well, all but two of the games worked. And the paddles for super breakout are mucked up. I also spent a lot of time cleaning the various hardware of several years of dust and dirt. Pics here: Geek stuff

Sunday
--------
* skipped church to sleep in (at my wife's request of course)
* lazed around the house most of the moring
* went to child protection training at the church in the afternoon. Only lasted about an hour.
* helped spray paint Evan's school project.
* went to church youth-group at the associate pastor's home. Had a good time.
* played some civ3 and BF1942.

All in all, a pretty relaxed weekend. The coming week should be fun though, with either scouts, a track meet, baseball game, or soccer game pretty much every night. Ah the joys of parenthood!

My Alma Mater, Indiana State U. was hacked recently. It appears that student records from 1991-2001 were compromised. Good thing I graduated in 1990.......

I work in the I.S. deptartment at this place: Subaru of Indiana. Yesterday I got to drive a Legacy and an Outback all over the state. Drove first to Indy, then down to Bloomington, over to Terre Haute, up thru Crawfordsville, then back to Lafayette. Weather was good, except for in the morning when it rained.

Put about 260 miles total on both cars, then got to fill out some kind of J.D. Power survey when we got back. Not a bad way to spend a day at work.....