Dialup is the Devil

NJ,
Check it out...



Ya gotta love it!


BTW, to anyone else reading this, feel free to give NJ tons of crap for STILL being on dialup. ;)

SBEMAIL

Today is going WAY too well. On my way to work my Contour got angry at me. She was running on fumes. When I nailed the gas to get out of my apartment complex, she bogged...not good... (This happens when my fuel pump tries to pump air into my motor and not gas. I don't have one of those air powered 'tours, so it doesn't work too well.) When this happened, it also woke me right up. You see, I live on an insanely busy stretch of road. I think that it would challenge most NASA engineers to find an exit window of more than 10 seconds to get my car outta the lot. I could see a couple of jackasses rounding the bend at about 50mph. As soon as the teaspoon of gas that was left in my tank sloshed back forward, she took off like a bat outta hell. Ahh, all better. My Sony proceeded to pick some kick-ass tunes. This consisted of:

Kittie - In Winter
Kidneythievs - Before I'm Dead
Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction

All GREAT wake up tunes. Plus, it's always nice to hear a sexy female voice (or two) in the morning.

When I got to work NJ told me that Strongbad had some new email's. SWEET!

If you haven't heard of Strongbad, you've gotta check it out. It's friggin hilarious. Zae, one of the hottest women that I've ever had the pleasure talking to, told me about Strongbad a while ago. (The webcam doesn't do her justice.)

My favorites:
Techno
Dragon
New Hands
Lunch Special
Virus

The coolest part is that you can click on random stuff in the cartoon. (Try it at the end.)

The rest of the day went by pretty quick. Also, I finally have all of the parts together to finish my room lights. I'm gonna see if I get it all up tonight. I'll have to post some pics to show you what the heck I'm talking about.

"Conga Line"

Just joining the line from NJ's blog...
From by Christie/ , found on her blog this afternoon.
Per Texasbiscuit/:

1. Get the closest book.
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

From "Maximum Boost - Designing, Testing and Installing Turbocharger Systems"

Early in the planning of the exhaust manifold design, consideration must be given to the location, and bleed-off to, the wastegate. The principals involved in integrating the wastegate into the system are that bleed-off to the wastegate must occur after all exhaust pulses headed for the turbo have been combined into one tube, and the flow path must be streamlined. Changes in the shape of a manifold as its temperature rises from ambient to operating must be considered during layout.


Not quite as cool as NJ's entry but hey I'm trying to turbocharge my car!


BTW, I find it funny that "blog" isn't in the Blogger spellchecker. WTF?

HSGM

It hit me like a tons of bricks today...a magnificent moment of perfect clarity...or something like that...

It's not alternative music, it's high-school-girl-music! That is THE best way to describe what the "New Rock" station considers to be alternative. The sad thing is that I think that they actually don't care that it's played repeatedly 43 million times a day. Here's a brief conversation that I overheard at my local Wals-Mart...

(Green Day songs starts playing over Wals-Mart PA system)
High School Girl Employee: Oh my god, this is the best song ever! Don't you think it's great?
High School Guy Employee: You've got to be kidding me! This song sucks and they play it every five minutes.


I chuckled but resisted from chiming in. It was GREAT. BTW, please don't fault me for shopping at Wals-Mart. It was the only place that I knew that I could get AAA batteries and Power Steering Fluid. Wals-Mart is evil. But that's for another post.

The sad thing is that as less and less people listen to the radio, it makes ClearChannel's job of acquiring all of the nation's radio stations that much easier.

Isn't it great that the FCC loosened the restrictions on how many stations one company can own in a given market? Thanks FCC.

Isn't bitching fun kids? :)

Milwaukee Radio Sucks

I love music. At home, in my car, at work, out riding my bike, I'm listening to music. Unfortunately because of my job, I get stuck listening to local radio. I can't stand Milwaukee radio. It is all the same regurgitate crap. Everything that they play is painfully predictable. The "Rock" station likes to play Ozzy, Alice in Chains, Metallica, and Nickleback at least 40 times a day. If I wanted to torture myself, I'm sure that I could record the station and sit down to figure out their playlist. If they played more than 100 different songs during the ENTIRE week I would be AMAZED.

The "New Rock" station plays pretty much everything that the "Rock" station does but it likes to throw in that new Green Day song at least once an hour. They also like playing what they consider alternative. That being whiny over-produced crap. Sum 41, Jimmy Eat World, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, all fall into that category. Just look at how many songs those four groups take up on their playlist. It's pathetic!

Do you want to listen to a real alternative station? Check out Radio Wazee. I can't get enough of them. Wazee kicks ass!

I'm sorry but I don't consider Rap or Country music to be actual music. Any music that can be made with a Kmart synthesizer and a microphone or just by singing about your dead dog/car/girl isn't music. That includes the "Kiss" station (I think every city has one of these), the "Jams" station, and the "Country" station.

I must give our local college radio stations tons of praise. WMSE and WCCX are my only relief. Thank you!!! WCCX is mainly alternative with some oldies and techno thrown in. WMSE is all over the place. They change DJs every 3 hours. They range from ancient scratchy bluegrass to really cool techno. My favorite is "Jules with Alternative" on Thursdays from 6-9pm. Not only does she have a sexy voice but she plays really kick-ass tunes. You can even download WMSE archives right here.

It's no wonder that satellite and streaming radio are doing so well. Nobody wants to listen to the crap that local radio has to offer anymore.

I can't wait to finish my car MP3 player. Having months of music at my fingertips will be AWESOME.

Gizoogle Rocks

A quick post...

If you haven't seen it, you've gotta check out http://www.gizoogle.com/

Just type any webpage into it and hit translate. Everything gomes out in Snoop/Ali G speak.

This is my personal favorite so far:

http://sites.gizoogle.com/?url=http://www.cnn.com/


I don't know about you but I needed a laugh after yet another craptastic Valentine's Day.

Money Tree

This weekend has been awesome. I'm getting really close to finishing a couple/three of my projects. The problem....money. I've been promising myself that I would be completely out of debt by my birthday (March 25th). Right now, there is no way in hell that is going to happen.

Anyone have any money tree seeds?

The really bad part is that I've been doing a TON of research in order to turbocharge my car. I REALLY want to get started on it. It's getting warmer out and the upgrade bug is starting to nibble.

The really really bad part is that I should spend money fixing my power steering pump, front CV joints, and finally finish my rear disc upgrade.

...and I want my garage lights up to do all of this work...

Stupid credit cards.

I found it!

YES!! I found a place that still carries the display that I want. Here's and example of what I'm talking about...



The one that I just bought has double the lines and has a cool blue EL background. This will allow me more room to display menus and let me use double sized text for easire reading. It will also match my car's blue interior lighting scheme (which I've been working on FOREVER). Another pic...



It's blurry and doesn't do them justice, but you get the idea.


--EDIT--
What a pain in the butt! I just spent the 45 minutes trying to figure out why my stupid images wouldn't post. It seems that if the URL is too long, the blogger editor doesn't like them.
--EDIT--

Forgetful Procrastinating Perfectionist

The three things that best describe me...

Forgetful:
I realized yesterday that I haven't touched one of my projects in over two years. It would be soo bad if it didn't involve computers. I actually started working on it over 4 years ago which is really painful.

Procrastinating:
I shelved the project due to a problem. I thought that the problem was caused by something much bigger than it was. After playing around with it yesterday, I fixed it. BTW, it is a specialized computer that I'm making into a MP3 player for my car.

Now that I have the computer fixed, I need a display.

Perfectionist:
All that I need is any old display to make this thing work. I actually even have and older one that might work. But do I use it? Hell no! I've spent all this time woking on it so I have to have this perfect display to go with it.


I may have to add insanity to the list. ;)