OK, here we go again. Got out of the habit of writing and lost motivation for a while. Recently I've been really busy with school and work. Going to school and working full time eats up most of my days. Seems I'm always worrying about the next assignment and don't seem to do much else but study or put off studying. I've been thinking about this for a while though and I think I need to try a little harder to post at least occasionally.        As you can see by the new addition to the side bar I have been doing some posting on Twitter. It has sort of got me back into everything. There are so many interesting people on there to meet if you just give it some time. A lot of my followers, and those that I follow, are 'space' related. There are more people out there that are interested in the space industry than I thought. It's not just space related though. There is an ever expanding universe of things related to Twitter. It takes a little effort to weed thr...

Jen and I went shopping today at a bunch of outlet stores in Vero Beach. We had stopped there once before but couldn't spend much time looking around. Today we hit every store that we thought looked interesting. There are quite a few clothing stores. That is really a good thing because I am in need of new clothes. Taking me shopping is usually a very painful experience. I am kind of picky and really cheap when it comes to buying clothes. For some reason I feel like I am wasting money buying clothes. I'll spent some real money on tools, but if a t-shirt costs more than $10 it might as well cost a thousand. Being that incredibly cheap means my closet is full of a bunch of old t-shirts that either cost around $10 or are at least 5 years old. In short, I have a closet full of rags. I've been doing better lately, and today I actually bought 8 new shirts. None of them were over $15, but they are nice polo or button up shirts. Clearance is a great thing. All those new clothes and...

I recently  stumbled upon this site that lets you take a picture of yourself and see what you would look like as a Simpsons  character. It has been around since the movie came out but I just found it the other day.  This would be me if I were on the Simpsons.

17 There must be some kind of shameless advertising conspiracy going on. If you click on the box above and take the test, it takes you strait to some dating sight. Lame.  Click this link instead and it will take you to the real testing sight. Try to answer honestly so if the need ever arrises you will have some idea of your odds. Happy bashing.

You might have heard by now that we didn't launch. It is the same problem that we have ben having off and on for a few years now. The sensors that tell the the shuttle that the external tank is empty are not working properly. It is very complicated so I won't go into it. Search google if you want to know the details.  Right now the preliminary schedule has us launching on January 2. It is schedule that has at least some people working on both upcoming holidays. If this is really the way it goes down I think that I will be working at least on New Years eve. I still have quite a bit of things planned for the break, if I get it. We really need to get some stuff fixed on the house to start getting it ready to sell eventually. If I have to work I have to work. That's just the way it goes. All that really means is I have to work that much harder on the days I do get off.  

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A lot has happened since the last time I posted on here. I won't get into it all now because I want to go into detail on some of it. I am still working in one of the striking shops. Everything is going really well. I don't think I would want to stay permanently but the work isn't bad and it is a nice change of pace for a while and a great way to make friends and contacts that might be useful later on. Things are still moving along on the house. I am going to the county commission meeting again on Tuesday. This should be the final time. The actual agreement that will let us build on our land will go before the board in the 'consent agenda'. That is the part where they pass a whole bunch of stuff that everyone agrees on all at once. Our issue shouldn't even get mentioned unless a commissioner wants to pull it for further discussion. After what happened at the last meeting I don't think it is likely. Nonetheless, I am going anyway, just in case. In other house ...

I have gotten really bad about posting and I'm sorry. I have moved back to first shift and temporarily taken over the lead spot while the normal guy does some training in another area. That's not a good excuse but it is all I have got. It has also taken a bit to get my body adjusted to getting up at 04:30 in the morning. I was used to 8:00 for the past year. Anyway I guess I will have to force myself to write something about every night. I need to spend time with Holly, our new Cockatoo anyway. That is what I am doing right now. She has always let me pet her, but I want to be able to get her out more often. I am setting here at the dining room table with her door open to just let her come out on her own. She has done it a few times and is really sweet when she lets me hold her. We also put Charley in the cage with her sometimes. They seem to get along fine but I don't think she really likes him that well.

It seems like there hasn't been much to post about lately. Work...home...work...home, same thing everyday. I just spent a long weekend in Ohio to visit my side of the family. It has been a few years since I have been there. I had a really good time visiting with everyone and catching up on what has been going on. A lot was the same, quite a bit of new things were built and some old things burned down. It was fun taking a drive around town. Two and a half days just wasn't enough and it went really fast. I wish Jen could have come along. She has only met the whole family a couple of times. All of our animals prevent both of us from going anywhere together, but we would never dream of not having them. Us four "kids" from top left, Melissa, Lori, Brian, and me.

The swami is back for one last chance. It is into the third quarter of the Super Bowl right now and the Swami is pinning more that just his reputation on the Colts to win. A victory for the Colts will put the Swami back in our good graces. A close loss for the Colts will result in continued verbal abuse for the Swami. A blowout for the Bears will mean a harsh punishment. We will render a punishment from the old country that will cut off future generations of Swamis. Place your bets and keep watching the game.

Due to some unforeseen and unpredicted circumstances the Swami will be be on a leave of absence for an undetermined length of time. This decision was was considered more politically correct than the more popular, beating with a bamboo pole. During this time there will be no predictions made for this sight until we can come to grips with the crushing defeat of our Ohio State Buckeyes. Congratulations to the Florida Gators for a very well played game. They deserve to be national champions.

I get new woodworking magazines and tool catalogs in the mail all the time. I will look through each page and pick out what I want. Oh the things I could do and build with them. A tool for everything. Projects would be so much simpler to build. I would be so happy…and then I wake up from that obvious dream and wipe the drool from my chin. I can’t buy anything new, there’s no room for any of that stuff in the garage. Every square inch of wall space is already used up and only 1 car fits. I am really a very patient person but I can barely wait until the new house is built and I can move into my new 600 sq. ft. shop. It will be a space only for tools and project making that I get to design. There won’t be anything cute or foofy out there, only guy stuff. I may just sleep out there.

I got my hair cut yesterday and while I was waiting for my turn I thumbed through one of those books with pictures of different hair styles. After looking through the whole book it struck me that my hair cut wasn’t in there. Nothing even close. I guess just plain and short doesn’t count as a style. That’s too bad, a hair cut that can be combed using not much more than a damp towel is a great thing. There loss.

Christmas is busiest time of year for anything and everything retail. That also applies to the shipping business. Since Christmas is on a Monday this year there will be three days in a row where regular UPS shipped packages won't budge. All those gifts that could be delivered won't be. Unless of course you buy the extra super duper Saturday shipping. You would think that due to the the holiday situation and the amount of things shipped this time of year, they would have made an exception and ran their regular service at least on Saturday. One extra day isn't that big a deal. Instead they say "screw little Timmy and his new laughing hyena Elmo that had to be purchased on the black market and will probably sent his parents to prison until he is 25, we're taking a three day weekend." Just one more reason I mark the Fed X or DHL button whenever I have a chance. Thanks a lot Brown for jacking up Christmas this year.

We finished all of our Christmas cards today. Finally. It wouldn't be that big a deal I guess if we hadn't started doing them last night. We are up to 41 or so this year. Not a huge number, but a decent amount of work. The hardest part really, was getting the newsletter thing just right. We can be kind of "particular" about things like that. Probably too particular, but I say why fight it. Go with your natural instinct. That same instinct comes out when I put up the lights outside. Luckily, I remembered some of last years lighting debacle. Last year I hung the same strand of lights on the garage about 4 times. There was always a better way to do it and I just had to have it that way. This year wasn't as bad, but only because I got it right the first time. Also for the first time the bushes out front got some lights. We bought boxes and boxes of lights after Christmas last year so I had plenty of lights to work with. I wanted to make the front of the house really ...

Yesterday I thought I was doing a good thing by taking my truck in to have some things fixed. The original front brake pads are still on my 7 year old, over 100,000 mile truck. I figured it was time to have them replaced. Also, the power steering pump was seeping a bit. Not enough to make a puddle, but I didn't like it. All of the belts were original from 1999 also, so I figured while they were off to change the power steering pump why not change them as well. I take the truck to the local Firestone Tire place for any work that I can't or won't do myself. I've had really good luck there in the past and there work is usually very good. We agreed that they would do a complete inspection and give me a call before they did anything really expensive. While the inspections were going on Jen and I went to the mall in Viera to get something to eat and find a gift for her gift exchange a work. As soon a we got there, they called with there recommendations. They said even thoug...

A while back I wrote a post about a wood project I did for a guy at work. I made a new spear gun for him. Payment wasn't necessary of course, but he said that he would get me a fish the next time he went out. About a week later he had a nice sized red snapper for me. It was still a whole fish so I asked him to fillet it for me. I could have tried myself but I'm pretty sure that I would screwed up a very good fish. There would have been nuggets instead of fillets. Unfortunately, my wisdom teeth extraction was the next day so we couldn't cook it right away. It would have to wait. Yesterday I found a recipe for baked red snapper on the internet. It was a Food Network recipe. I thought it sounded good and wanted to do something really good with the fish. So this morning I made a special trip to Publix to get what I needed. It was a relatively simple recipe That I was sure I could make. The recipe was intended for use with a whole fish but the fillets were big enough that I c...

Welcome! Welcome to anyone that has been reading the blog I started on Myspace . I really want to keep up with this and post at least every few days. A post everyday would be better, but I am only so creative. It has finally cooled down here. It was 54 this morning and windy. I even had to wear a jacket earlier. I'm glad though, high humidity and the low 90's were getting old. Since it is getting cooler I've had more motivation to do some house projects outside. I've been scraping caulk from around the windows and replacing it. I know, I know you can't stand the excitement. It really did need to be done though. Anyway, as is my usual luck, when I'm fixing one thing I tend to screw up something else and give myself another project. This past Sunday I was working on the upstairs windows. I can't do these during the week because my wife (Jen) says she has to be home when I do things up in the air just in case someone needs to call 911. I guess it is a good p...

Test Test 4...5...6 Alright, lets try something fancy. It's picture time. Ok I know I could have picked a picture of something really good for a test , but your stuck with me. This is a picture of me at my desk at work. I promise I'll put some better stuff up in the future.