I'm tired of being sick. I've been feverish since Saturday night. I'm tired of feeling like crap. I'm tired of my ears ringing. The medical professional I saw declared it viral and said if I still felt this bad on Friday to come back. Whatever. At last check my fever was 101.3 just about an hour ago. I'm a bad sick person. I don't like to feel all weak. I don't like the exhaustion that results from climbing the stairs. I'm tired of coughing. I'm tired of blowing my nose. I'd like to swallow non painfully some day. Really. This can all end soon. I'm telling you ibuprophen and sudafed are not doing the trick no matter what the nice medical person said. Also I've developed a disconcerting rattle in my chest.

very bad day

I should write about this very bad day some time. Maybe later, after it's over.
EADS/Aastra/Intecom are morons.
rack moves suck
racking servers sucks
shoulder hurts
cd changer in car dead (just before a long road trip)
new sunglasses not in (just before long road trip)
new cd changer not yet here (and of unknown working status)
lots of potentially cool things coming by mail.. not here yet.

on the up side I get to go home and play with my table saw.

hot, sweaty, bruised and in love

I just got back from Metro Gun Club where I shot another two rounds of trap with Chilly. I shot the first round with my 20 ga that had been cut down and had the safety fixed but no recoil pad attached yet. Well at least the safety was predictable in the switch positioning thing(even if I wasn't always smart enough to make sure it was off). Also I think it partially engages when the gun fires, so I'm never quite sure if is off or on for the next shot. I just need to add fidgeting with it to my loading ritual. Anyhow, it was a touch short without the recoil pad. But I shot an 8, which is still a respectable score for a third round of trap ever.

Well there was this guy shooting with us, Charley, and after that round while the scorer was reloading the tower offered to let me shoot his shotgun for the next round while he went and paid for a few more, because he hated to see people fight their equipment. (and my shotgun looked especially sad with the tape around where it was cut off and no recoil pad installed yet) So with a few words of instruction about the use of his shotgun went off to the clubhouse. By the time he got back we hadn't started shooting yet, but we'd picked up another pair of shooters making us 5.

Charley said "Oh if you haven't started yet wait! I have another gun in storage here that you can shoot. I'll be back!" and trotted back down to the clubhouse. Back he comes, with another shotgun, which he hands to me and tells me has never been fired, besides the six proofing shots, and that I get to take it on it's first ride. A little examination shows that it's another Browning. Oh dear.. It feels SOOO nice. A bit stiffer than his which was broken in a bit. I confirm that he really does want me to shoot it. I borrow a box of shells from Chilly (cause I was shooting 20 ga and this gun was a 12 ga)

The round begins, and I miss the first clay out of the house. My ball cap was too far down and I couldn't see over the end of the longer barrel and out into the sky enough, so I reversed it, no sun protection but it'll keep the hair out of my eyes right? I feel a bit bad as I'm waiting my turn that such a fine shotgun got off to an inauspicious start. I'm up. I call for the bird, and powdered it. I grinned. Charley grinned back at me (I shoot left handed so I was facing him). I proceed to hit the next three at station 3, and 20 of the 25 total.

I thanked him profusely for letting me take the shotgun out for it's first round, and told him he was a bad bad man for leading me into wanting a much nicer shotgun. He pointed out that it was probably mostly fit, and that I should find something with a single visible barrel and 13.5" trigger pull. Well with the recoil pad in place the fit on my 20 ga is similar. Maybe I'll go get twin beads set in my rib, and try mine again.

But boy was that shotgun nice. Mine bruised up my shoulder pretty good again, I figure the recoil pad should fix that though. Want to see a picture? Here is the Browning page about the shotgun.

Those who worry about me and such things(this means you Mark).. No I'm not going to go drop $1200 on a shotgun. I'm not crazy. But apparently shotguns are like sewing machines; and Brownings are like Berninas.
h

3:8/25
4:20/25
Average 11.5
46/100 lifetime

Well I fixed my webcam. It hadn't worked since the end of May when they replaced my desktop at work. The view of my desk has changed and there is a date time stamp so you all can tell if the image is current or not. Also the perspective has changed(more profile, no longer over the top of my monitor). I know nobody cares about my webcam, least of all me, until somebody says "Hey is that working?" and I realize it's not. How odd that people out there actually check it.

WHERE IS MY LADDER?

I loaned it to somebody. It hasn't come home. I can't remember who I loaned it to.

well today the room was measured for carpet. I still haven't ordered the cabinets. I'm going to have to take time off work to do so if we go with the one's from Scherer Brothers, since they have home owner hostile hours. I think if I haven't managed by the weekend, we'll be going with the one's from Lowe's anyhow. Even if they're more expensive and will take longer. Because had I ordered them the weekend I failed to order the Scherer Brother's ones I'd have them by next weekend already.

KB & Pat's goats

KB & Pat's goats

My friend KB and her partner got goats. They're cute little buggers.

meat orgy

That's what betsy called it when I described my plans for dinner tonight. I have one of those grills that were so heavily advertised 2-3 years ago. The ones that do both charcoal and propane. I use it set up for propane on weeknights when I just want to grill something quick. However on the weekends I go for charcoal. And when I fire up charcoal, I cook a lot of meat. After all the coals stay useful for a lot longer than any chicken breasts or burgers I might cook, or even any pork tenderloin.

So the plan for the day is, wait until the rest of the meat is thawed.. then I'm grilling. Grilling for the end times, or for a sudden party at my house or something.

I'll be doing
hamburgers (1 lb worth)
chicken breasts (however many are in the package I'm thawing)
beer brats 1 package
cheddarwursts 1 package
pork tenderloin, probably bacon wrapped and maple glazed.

I expect tonight we'll eat the tenderloin and the rest will go into the fridge to be warmed up as quick dinners all week. I could be wrong.. I may feel the lure of brats instead. Or I may go crazy and we might actually have a meat orgy and eat what is that like 6-8lbs of meat between us. That seems mighty unlikely though.

Today was terribly exciting.
Toad and I went out to lunch, then off to look at cabinets but we were thrarted by the place being closed on Saturdays. Then of to Lowe's where I bought a new toilet for the basement. On our way home we decided we should go look at new mobile phones. Now we both have new phones. Maybe I'll carry this one more it fits in my pocket much better.

Then we got home and I installed the toilet. There were a few learning bumps in the process. Minor but extant. For example.. uh.. while I've always just set the old throne in the tub to drain after I pulled it off... that doesn' work if you have a shower who's opening is not wide enough to admit the toilet. Thusly I ended up with it draining all over the bathroom floor as well as down the hallway into the utility room. Where it rests until I get excited about hauling it to the garage and figuring out how one gets rid of a used chocolate brown toilet. Anybody want one? It works fine. It's only crime was that it's chocolate brown. It's even a high flow model.

there's a world out there

As I dig out from a weekend of home improvements, being sick, and heading back to a week at work that has been nothing short of surreal, it occurs to me I haven't mentioned most of this here.

Yesterday was crazy at work..I got in after a 3 day weekend to find them trying to replace my desktop machine. I put them off for a few minutes and got my shit together. Just about the time I got my machine back, the boss walks in and says "Start shutting everytihng down we lose power in 30 minutes." Since moments of clarvoyance are rare I just follow instructions. Turns out there was some sort of electrical boo boo over at the construction site. Power was out for over four hours.

Today we got told in the morning everything woudl have to go down again tonight. That in combination with a few of my servers being dead... it was crazy.

However I came home and found out something super neat and cool! My Tivo got upgraded and now I can sort recorded shows by title and group them. This is cool cause it means if I want to watch Good Eats I can go find them all at once.. rather than scanning up and down a 100 item list looking for things. Woo!