Black Stripe Free Sparring Pattern | Watch Video
Sparring & breaking boards | Watch Video
(Yes, I dubbed in the audio. We don’t play that song from The Karate Kid during tests.)
It’s hard to drive in Austin’s Friday evening rush hour traffic and take photos of redneck trucks.
I have our TiVo 95% setup.
The Good:
The Bad:
This Tae Kwon Do belt display has been long awaiting the top rung to be occupied by my black belt. No, I didn’t quit. No, I didn’t get my second degree (although I will in the coming months). We left Unified Tae Kwon Do and have become Eclipse Tae Kwon Do under masters Gus Pennison and Rick Wescott. I received a new black belt and uniform tonight and was able to retire my old belt.
I don’t really keep up on television technology. I attribute this to my not watching that much TV. Early this past Spring our VCR suffered from lockjaw which lead to surgery and eventually, euthanasia.
Weeks passed and Elise got on to me that we needed a way to record television shows. Since I am Chief Technology Officer of the household, it was my job to materialize a solution. During my lunch break I headed over to Wal-Mart to purchase a VCR. I wanted an plain, cheap, old-school VHS VCR because, well, that’s how I roll.
I couldn’t find a VCR. All that Wal-Mart offered were VCR/DVD combos and DVD burners for more than what I was looking to pay. I just wanted a $20 programable VCR. I spent ten times my budget on a DVD burning Pioneer DVR.
I hooked up this newfangled gadget to our entertainment center’s head unit and did what most men never do, I handed the remote to the wife. I still don’t know how to operate the DVR. Any time I want something recorded, I have to get Elise to do it for me.
I went to Amazon.com last week to see if there were some must-have items that I could put on my Christmas wishlist and found a good deal on an 80-hour DVR with TiVo Series 2. It was delivered yesterday. Now I’m looking forward to getting it hooked up with TiVo service and using TiVo Desktop wirelessly.
This rig should make for a cool pairing with the Monster iTV I recently hooked up. Last night we watched Batman Begins on the TV from the iBook.
“Sure, the World Wide Web is great
but you, you make me salivate.
Yes, I love technology.
But not as much as you, you see.
But I still love technology.
Always and forever.”
Dell has been on my blacklist for just over two years now (read here, here, here, here, here and here).
This is from an article posted yesterday on BusinessWeek Online:
Many observers, including customers, partners, and analysts, fret that Dell may have been cutting costs so much in order to hit financial targets in recent quarters that it has compromised other measures of performance, including customer support and, possibly, product quality. “The key is to keep customers happy in an efficient fashion,” says Maxwell. “Not getting the processes right can really snowball through the system quickly.”
Meantime, companies with more innovative products and better support, such as Apple (AAPL), are growing at a faster pace. Even once-beleaguered rival Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) grew faster than Dell last quarter.
And this exerpt from the article entitled “Hanging up on Dell?” hits home:
Armed with an extended warranty that cost him an extra $300, the Pasadena (Calif.) retiree got on the phone and waited. After sitting on hold for 45 minutes, a technician whom Ulyatt could barely understand came on the line and diagnosed a “software problem.” Ulyatt’s call, transferred to the software technician, was dropped. Calling back, Ulyatt waited on hold another 45 minutes, asked for the software desk, and waited a half-hour more before hanging up. “At the moment, I’m not high on Dell’s service,” says Ulyatt, who plans to buy two new PCs in a year or so. “When I buy again, I will look at others beyond Dell.”
In the past two years I’ve managed to consolidate most data from two older, barely breathing (this is an obvious Windows issue but I’m on my Dell tangent) Dell desktops and transfer the files to a server. It wouldn’t cross my mind to call Dell for support. If I can’t fix it, I salvage what data I can and move the computer to my Dell boneyard. If the day comes where it’s necessary that I buy a new computer for the office, I’ll shop elsewhere unless Dell straightens up.
Rarely do I get a case of the Monday’s. It’s usually a case of the Tuesday’s for me. Today has turned out to be one of those Tuesday’s. My morning started out with the loss of hearing in my right ear. I don’t know the technical or medical details, but I don’t have Grade A ears. When I was a wee lad I had “tubes” in my ears. To date I still don’t really know why I had these tubes in my ears. Brief research lends me to believe that I had tympanostomy tubes.
I remember once losing hearing in one of my ears during my adolescence. My mom took me to our family’s general practitioner to find out why I lost my hearing. He took a large syringe with a soft plastic tube on the end, filled it with a warm water and hydrogen peroxide solution and forcefully irrigated my deaf ear. To spare you the details, chunks of orange, grease-like material spat from my ear hole. Alas! I could hear. I could hear very well too.
Now keep in mind, I’m very concious as far as hygiene is concerned. I clean my ears regularly but there’s only so far one can go spelunking with a washcloth or foreign object into the ear canal.
Every six months or so I lose hearing in one of my ears. I couldn’t “fix” my hearing loss a couple years ago so I visited the medical supply store. There I purchased a 20ml plastic syringe and have since performed my own earrigation.
This morning I woke up with total loss of hearing in my right ear. I pulled my earrigator and hydrogen peroxide from the bathroom drawer and got into the shower. I tried flushing my ear to no avail.
Not being able to hear out of one ear is extremely frustrating. My equilibrium is off and, well, I can’t hear out of one side of my head. While driving to work I completely missed my mouth while trying to take a drink of water from my 34 oz. Bubba Keg and poured a liberal amount of H20 onto my crotch. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with equilibrium. It may be due in part to Daylight Savings Time or plate tectonics.
Listening to my iPod during the commute was pointless. I had my stereo volume up to the point of rattling and all I could hear was, “Verumm arrm mmm nurrr mooom”
I’m going to go to my boss’s pharmacy later this afternoon and see if someone can dispense some sort of solution for my problem.
As you’re reading this, be glad that you have your damn hearing. I take back what I wrote previously about having to choose a sense to give up.
UPDATE: I went to the pharmacy later in the afternoon. I was sold on a few ear candles (cool name for a band). Some people think ear candling is a good thing. Others think it’s not such a good idea. Either way, I just wanted to hear again.
Wanda also gave me some herbal ear oil that is supposed to loosen up any compacted junk in the ear canal. I put a few drops of the ear oil in the ol’ ear hole immediately. I couldn’t wait much longer before I had to try out the ear candle.
The ear candle isn’t really a candle by conventional standards. I thought it would be some type of low heat candle that gently dripped candle wax into your ear and would slowly solidify and the gunk in the ear would afix to the candle wax and be pulled out when removing the melted wax. Instead, an ear candle is a gause like material, formed into a long cylinder that is dipped in wax to mantain a tube-like structure. The narrow end of the tube is placed in the ear canal, lit and the flame pipes a low heat into the ear canal and creates a gentle vacuum that is supposed to “lift” dirty little deposits that reside in the ear canal.
The tube didn’t work. My equilibrium was non-existent and I was severely frustrated. I went back to the pharmacy and they gave me a 20ml syringe. I drove back to the office, microwaved a cup of water and earrigated the hell out of my right ear with the new syringe. After another 20 minutes of forcing hot water into my ear, I finally regained my hearing (see chunks of orange greasy material spewing above).
I hate losing my hearing as much as strangers sitting across from me when I’m eating along.
Things Elise and I both heard John Madden say during Monday Night Football’s match-up of the Ravens and Steelers:
“Busted through the A-hole”
“He gave him the ol’ reach-around”
“Thanks for urinalysis”
| Note to Josh: When the blender makes a funny sound, smells like burning plastic and begins to smoke…that’s probably a good sign that you should stop. The 4 previous blenders that you burned up should have been a clue. |
Does anyone know where to get an industrial strength blender for Christmas? Preferably one made out of titanium?
It’s hard to believe that this is only our 2nd Halloween in our house. Last year Josh and I were so excited to finally have trick-or-treaters that we decided to go all out. (You see when you live in an apartment you don’t get trick-or-treaters.) We headed to the local craft store and bought some ornaments to decorate the lawn and house. Then we headed over to the mall to Spencer’s to get some scarier items. We found a noise detector ghost that’s supposed to light up, move and howl whenever it detects noise. It’s really neat too except that you pretty much have to clap your hands to get it to work. We hung it up outside by the door thinking that as trick-or-treaters approached it would go off. No such thing. I don’t think it worked once. The other big thing we bought was a DVD that plays different excerpts of ghouls, ghosts and goblin heads making scary faces and saying scary things. Josh used an old t.v. and set up an elaborate scene in our spare bedroom by our front walkway so the kids would see it as they walked up. He started a couple of weeks before Halloween and spent countless hours working on his scene. He went to the hardware store and found some plexiglass. He hunted outside for sticks and leaves. He rolled an old office chair into the bedroom and found a blanket to use. Long story short, we had a really cool goblin head that looked like it was floating in the room. Josh had also purchased a Michael Myers mask (from the movie “Halloween”) to don when kids came to the door. Do you think any of this scared the kids? Nope. They laughed! We’ve decided that kids are too desensitized today when it comes to horror. Maybe we need to try what my childhood classmate’s family did. Tyler Peterson’s parents always got into Halloween and their house was the “cool” house to go to for treats. Tyler’s mom would dress up like a witch and Tyler’s dad would dress up like a werewolf. They decorated their porch and Tyler’s mom would sit in a rocking chair stirring a black cauldron with dry ice in it. She never broke character and she’d tell you in her best witchy voice to stick your hand in the cauldron to complete her potion. When you’d stick your hand in the cauldron you felt a mushy wet mess that she would then tell you were brains (cooked macaroni noodles). As we left the porch Tyler’s dad would jump out from behind a bush and chase after us. We’d all scream and run away until we were breathless and we’d go back every year…even when we were too old to be scared. I think Josh and I should consider taking this route, although as I sit here and write I can’t help but laugh. Last year we almost ran out of candy and I had to run to the store to buy more. This year I planned ahead and bought candy at Sam’s three weeks in advance. Tonight was chilly and we had far fewer trick-or-treaters than last year. Needless to say the only dent in the 7 lbs of candy I bought is from Josh and me eating it over the last few weeks.
One more thing, where I grew up…Iowa…we had to tell a joke in order to get a treat. That’s why they call it Trick-or-Treat. You have to do a trick (tell a joke) in order to get a treat. By the middle of the night the neighbors answering the doors were finishing your jokes and sometimes would ask you for a different one. You always made sure to have two jokes ready. By the end of the night they were so tired of hearing them they would open the door and all but throw the candy bowl at you. As we got older we got smarter and would wait to trick-or-treat until later. That way we knew everyone would be tired of hearing jokes and would be ready to get rid of their candy. We got a lot of loot that way. I think you would call it power trick-or-treating. Josh made fun of me and said that telling jokes for candy must be some kind of Yankee thing. I told him that explains why people in the north tend to be smarter. We had to work for our candy…
Last week we hired a new employee to help out in the fulfillment department. She’s a great woman and an excellent employee so far.
I got back from lunch this afternoon and was engaged in small talk in the break room. Somehow I brought up Cabo San Lucas. Our newest employee asked if I had been to Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina.
“Yes, I have.”
“My son was supposed to play there recently”, she replied.
“Really? Is your son in a band?” I asked.
“Yes. He’s 20-years-old and writes all the songs, plays all the instruments and records everything himself”, she explained.
“Does he live here in town?”, I asked.
“Yes, he lives with us here.”
At this point, I was fairly certain as to who her son was but for shits and giggles, I had to ask:
“What kind of music does he play?”
“Heavy metal”, she responded.
“I’ll bet I already know who he is. What’s the name of his band?”
[Slight pause]
“Ahem… Dead Slut.”
Elise and I recently bought two opaline gouramis. We affectionately named them Tony Soprano and Carmela. Carmela got sick yesterday and she’s basically on the verge of moving on. She’s not doing well. What’s sad is that Tony Soprano is trying to help her. He follows her, ever so slowly, and watches over her. He nudges her when she starts to float awkwardly. Elise cries when she watches the fishbowl.
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten brussel sprouts in my going on 30 years. I made them tonight – steamed with sea salt and a dijon butter sauce. Awesome! Also on the menu was garlic and rosemary roasted fingerling potatoes and smoked pork porterhouses. For the rub I used kosher salt, fresh cracked peppercorns, garlic powder, cumin, chile powder and ground coriander.
