January 2006 - Posts
I am working on a new Pandora channel...
Old School Rap.
Take one part LL, add some Ice T, throw in a dash of Run DMC, Whodini
and Schoolly D. What do you have? A kick-ass mix of music
like the stuff I listened to as a white-bread suburban catholic school
kid in
the late 80s. Some of this music is available on mixes and the
more popular stuff is available on CDs, but seriously, who has Whodini
or Schoolly on CD?
(well, other than Dave ;)
Check it out, let me know what you think...
Right now 'Friends' by Whodini is on. Holy moly is that a rush of
old memories -- break dancing in the driveway, riding in Dave's Monza
(now that was a sweet car) -- I am cracking up just thinking about
it... I might have to go rent some old breakdancing movies this
weekend. I think I should be able to find Breakin' at Video
Palace... Oh man, I need to take a deep breath.
UPDATE: She's Crafty by the Beasties HEEEHEEEE!
Current front-runners?
Chevy HHR
Scion xB
Pontiac Torrent
Saturn VUE
Chevy Equinox
I'm kind of digging the HHR, but we still have the same "can we fit 3 kids in the backseat concern as with the Scion xB. The nice part is that I can use my Dad's GM discount, and it has a lot more cargo space than the xB. The VUE is actually smaller, but we really had good experience with my SL2, so Saturn has to be considered. The other two are basically the same car (exactly the same frame, engine, and general stuff) with slightly different options available. The base price is even the same (and about $5,000 more than the HHR and xB).
If we can figure out a way to fit 3 car seats, we will get the HHR, I think. Joshua is big enough for a booster at this point, so we will probably go get one, so that will take up less room, but we still have to fit Caleb's seat and an infant seat for the near future. That might be a deal breaker. If anyone has any tricks (other than the extremely lame and annoying "get a minivan, duh...") for fitting three kids and two adults in a 5 passenger vehicle, send them along. All you rainforest-killing, gas-guzzling, $35,000-spending, minivan-gotta-be-having, "soccer-mom" freaks can keep your minivans. If there were a hybrid or fuel-cell car that fit three kid seats, that's what I'd buy. It's not so much that I am a psycho-environmentalist-anti-petroleum kind of guy, just that I really like nature, and if I can do a little tiny something in my little tiny corner of the world to help make my footprint smaller (it's already WAY too big) I think I should. So there. Phtbbbbbbbt!
With Baby0 v3.0 on the way in a couple of months, we are looking at
replacing vehicles. I may try to keep the Jeep up and running for a
while longer, but the Saturn is getting replaced. We have a couple of
vehicles that are interesting to us, but pretty much everything is too
expensive and drinks too much gas!
First we looked at Passat wagons. We like the way they look, and we
were interested in the TDI engine. Unfortunately, they no longer make
the TDI engine, the new engines don't get very good mileage, and we
don't think we can fit 3 car seats across the back. :(
Then we looked at the Scion xB. It is probably still too narrow for the
car seats and we would give up a fair amount of cargo space. :(
Now we're looking at the Saturn VUE and maybe the Chevy Malibu Maxx.
I cringe at the thought of a $350-a-month car payment again. Plus our
car insurance would probably go up a fair amount. Oh well, I guess we'd
better bite the bullet -- this is what we signed up for!
I guess I am a little late to the party on this subject. My DVR has the 5C protection implemented on all channels except the over the air channels. It makes sense, but I was still a little bummed. Such is life. I could, in theory record stuff off PBS or the networks, but I really wanted to be able to record off DiscoveryHD, INHD, and maybe a little from Encore and some kids channels. I can still capture from the analog channels to my desktop computer using my video capture card, but the quality is vastly lower.
If you haven't checked it out yet, you have to try out
Pandora. It is really only good if you have a high-speed connection, but if you do, it is sweet. You tell it a couple of songs and it tailors a 'radio station' of sorts that plays music that is similar (based on their factors) to that which you specified. Then as the songs play, you tell it whether you like them or not, and the station gets more dialed in to what you like. I have a station going that is predominantly folky guitar music right now that started with Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews. I've heard everything from Springsteen to Dire Straits in there, and a bunch of it fits better than you would think. Check it out...
Wow, Monday again.
I
enjoyed my weekend, but it is gone much too quickly. I got to
spend a fair amount of time with the boys and even got a little
strumming on the guitar in (although not really any quality practice
time). I recorded a bunch of movies on the DVR since I am going
to try to see if I can record them onto DVDs using my laptop and my new
firewire (see this: http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/
if you are interested in trying yourself). Unfortunately, I never
really got around to doing anything other than watching some of the
movies. Beautiful Girls is one of those sneaky good movies. Check it out if you've never seen it.
Yesterday,
I spent a while laying around (actually got some snuggle time with
Joshua while we watched "Go, Diego Go!" -- apparently Diego is Dora's
cousin, he's an animal rescuer) and grilled up cheeseburgers to the
cheers of my little 2-person fanclub. Sidebar: There
is nothing in the world like walking in the door with grilled food and
getting an ovation. The shouts of "I'm ready to eat! Daddy
made -- CHEESE BURGERS!!! YAAAAY!!!" are seriously one of the
finest rewards any backyard chef could desire. It's the simple
pleasures, I tell you. After munching our delightful dinner, I had to depart for my mixed bowling league. I tossed a 555 but we lost all 3 games.
After
bowling, Sarah (one of my bowling teammates) and I went to the watering
hole for Porky's birthday celebration. Sarah got to have German
Chocolate cake for the first time in her entire life. How do you get to be an adult and have never eaten German Chocolate cake? She
is now a big fan of German Chocolate. Porky was happy that so
many people came out to celebrate his birthday, and he enjoyed his
birthday a lot. Finally -- way too late -- Sarah drove all the
folks who'd had too much home, and I hoofed it home and collapsed in
the recliner for some late-night DVR watching.
Which brings us back to Monday...
This is a little random, but I have 7 minutes until my next meeting so I'll post it anyway. The air conditioning is on in my office. I am one of the fortunate people to have walls and a door (which I'll admit is pretty sweet, as simple pleasures go) but the unfortunate part is I do not control the thermostat. I could go on and on, but the short of it is, the person with the thermostat has the vents in their area closed, so that the temperature never changes. They then set the thermostat to some fairly reasonable temperature, but different enough from ambient that the climate controls kick in. Subsequently, my office becomes a little chris-oven or chris-refridgerator. Right now? Arctic.
This is a busy time of year. Right now at work, a lot of customers are in their closing periods, so our software gets a bigger workout than normal -- so we get more issues reported than normal. Although things are solid with our last couple of releases, there are still a few issues and figuring out who is going to fix what and with what priority can be a difficult task at times. Yeah, I know -- WAH!
On a totally different note, last night I stopped by Mac's to pick up some gumbo and bread for Jodes since I was at work until about 8:30 (and those pregnant ladies need their Mac's bread!). I talked to Wally for a couple minutes and watched a little of the wings game. It amazes me how little I am interested in watching the NHL anymore. I still love hockey, and would love to actually play occasionally, but I just don't have the desire to watch anymore. People always say how they don't watch baseball like they used to since the strikes -- I think that is actually what has happened to me. I've lost the love...
I'm all verklempt -- talk amongst yourselves....
This weekend I ventured to Grand Rapids to hang out with the guys from Stickerblister. Friday night, John and I went to the Rocker to check them out, and Dave even came out for a bit to listen and have a barley pop. Dave was getting up to go goose hunting at the ungodly hour of 2:30 AM, so he departed somewhat early. John and I stuck around until the bitter end and enjoyed the show. The guys were able to leave their equipment (most of it, anyway) so there wasn't much pick up to be done after.
Saturday during the day, I went to Circuit City and picked up some computer odds and ends to help me in my quest to do a sound-board recording of the boys. A new 160GB HD, external HD enclosure, firewire PCMCIA card, and RCA-mini Headphone cable completed the necessities for the evening's recording activities. I went out later for some clothes (some running shirts, some jeans and a new hat) at some big winter sales at the huge mall. When we got to the bar/club/bowling alley out on Plainfield, the sound guy wasn't there. It turns out he was 'stranded' and wasn't going to make it. The soundboard had no RCA outs, so I had to rund to RadioShack to get a Y-adapter and some RCA to 1/4" adapters. We figured out I could pull the signal right off the mains out of sound board, so I hooked up and checked it out. I had to crank my microphone input down as far as it would go, and I was still getting way too much gain. I didn't know what else to do, so I recorded Stickerblister's set like that. After the set, I talked to the replacement sound guy, and he agreed to let me plug into the headphone jack instead (using that Y-adapter I bought!) and for FledFive's performance I could record at a much better level. Unfortunately, after the first set, the dude turned the headphone output off and forgot to turn it back up before the second set, so I got nothing of the second set until I checked it, which meant I missed all but the last two songs. Oh well.
After the show, John and I helped Matt load up and then went back to John and Michelle's and played Madden until about 4 AM.
Yesterday, I got up, packed up, and headed home. I tried to stop by Elderly Instruments in Lansing, but they're closed on Sundays. I ended up in bed before 8 PM and slept until 8 AM. Today I felt great!
Today, it was back to work and the daily grind. I think I like playing recording engineer for my buddy's rock band better ;)
Well, that break from the working world was too short, and I am already back in the swing at the office. Fortunately, after the break, I am in a better mood, for the time being, anyway.
Christmas was very nice at our house. Joshua really enjoyed opening gifts -- perhaps too mcuh, he was pretty obnoxious about asking for more gifts. We're working on him. He got a lot of stuff he liked from us, though, including a BC Builders I-Fell Tower set and a new Leap-Pad that he really loves (and is learning like crazy on). He got a few other smallish things that he seemed to enjoy as well.
Caleb seemed a bit overwhelmed, and actually got a little frustrated. Before we even got through his stocking stuffers, he was cranky because he wanted to play with Joshua's stuff. In the end he got several toys he seems to really like, and the two of them see to get along fine with the new stuff.
Jodi made out like a bandit (because I had a little extra Christmas money and she gets to be a queen once in a while, right?). I got her a diamond tennis bracelet, a bottle of Tommy Girl perfume (which I kinda like), a State hoodie, and then some houseware stuff (a bulletin board for by the phone, a new cordless phone system with two handsets, a spoon rest for the stove to replace a broken one, yadda yadda yadda).
I got a book I had requested as well as a new spare ball (a Michigan State Viz-a-Ball). Coolness. (There was something else, that I feel bad for forgetting right now, as well).
I roasted a duck for Christmas dinner (I sorta made up the recipe based on a bunch of stuff I found online -- maybe I'll post it later if I get bored), and Joshua raved about it -- perhaps giving me the best present of all.
Then it was on to the OverbeekChristmasWorldTour2006!
Traverse City for a couple of days with Jodi's parents and the Hagerty family. Highlights included a new Ukulele for me (yay!) and the boys got loaded up with good stuff like Thomas sets, tools, a medical kit, and some kid binoculars. Jodi got lots of stuff, but the thing I though was coolest was Aunt Louise made this year's 'Louise' wine in honor of Jodi -- J. Louise. The picture chosen for the label is a curious selection -- Jodi at 14 or 15 in her marching band uniform holding her trumpet -- but the bottle looks pretty cool, and they gave us a case to share with friends and family.
Then it was on to Grand Rapids for more Christmas. Again the boys got loaded up with loot -- more Thomas stuff, Legos, cars, and of course Grandma Denny hand-made clothing. Jodi got some desired housewares, and I got my new rainsuit for fishing, (we all got lots of stuff, these are just a few notables). For New Years' Eve, we ended up staying in, but Mom and I had a couple of drinks (okay, quite a few) and 'celebrated' making it through another year.
Finally on Monday, we were home and could rest. I ended up going to Cabela's to help Dave spend a 10$ gift card he had, and picked up a new beer-can-chicken cooker for myself.
Amidst all of this, Joshua was sick (but a trooper!) and we of course put about 500 (or more) miles on the car. Oh well!
Now it is back to work -- but at least I have a bunch of new books, and clothes, and a new Uke to goof with in the evenings!