Worth it? I think so...

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So they finally have the tollway built right to my front door now. Before I had to drive to and from work via normal city streets. It didn't cost me any money but it cost me about 45 to 50 minutes each way. Well now the toll way is finished and it has changed my life.

First of all the time. It now takes me less than 20 minutes to get to work. Not only that but I get there at 75 mph and on cruise control. Lets say that it's this 20 minutes vs. our previous 50 minutes. That's a 30 minute savings, EACH WAY. Multiply that out and that is a savings of 260 hours every year.

Now the money... It now cost me $1.70 each way in tolls. If you multiply that out you end up with $884 each year. That's a lot of money to just drive to work. But is it worth $884 to save nearly 11 days worth of driving. I think so. That's 11 days I can use sleeping, playing, loving, working, learning, or just doing something crazy like being with family. It's worth it...

arrrrgggggg....

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So I'm sittin at the Volkswagen dealership getting the 20,000 mile maintenance done on my "ride". I'm pretty much thoroughly frustrated with their internet access. They have it locked down pretty tight. Pretty much just web access and even then they have that pretty tight. No IM, no youtube, no WOW, no email, and something is up with accessing secure sites as well. Well you can pretty much assume that next time I come back here I'll have me a proxy that I can access via port 80 so I can do my thang...  Anyway, I guess I'll get back to doing some bills and waiting for my waiting for my wheels...

It's your turn to buy me something...

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Ever wondered what you could buy me? Come on, I know you have. Well here is your answer... The Harmony 1000  I mean, doesn't everybody need a $500 remote control. How does one get along with out this remote control is my question. Eh, maybe after I finish my surround sound I can do splurge on this... we'll see....   Oh BTW, I now am the proud owner of iflyjet.com It was only a matter of time. :)

I has a plan...

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Ok... anybody that has known me for more than about ten minutes knows that I'm not the guy that can plan anything. I can't plan the future more than about what I"m doing right now. But I'm here to tell you... I know what I'm going to be doing on Monday June 11th. I have two things going in my favor that day. First, I'm off on Mondays so I can pretty much do what ever I need when ever I need it. Second, Brandt will be at Rachel's so I don't have to worry about getting him to school. So bright an early on that Monday I'm going to be setting my ass in front of the Cingular store waiting on my iphone. So if you need me on June 11th, now you'll know where to find me.  :)

Pointy ears = hot...

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So tonight on the treadmill I was catching up on my podcasts. Specifically the video podcast. I was watching Tiki Bar. In episode 17 and 19 they had that woman that plays Cally on Battlestar Galactica, Niki Clyne... She cleans up pretty good. Of course for some reason they gave her pointy ears. They even had a Battlestar reference in Ep 19. Anyway, I'll catch up on the rest of them next week. La La is smokin hot too by the way.

Am I getting anal retentive?

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Am I getting anal retentive in my old age or what? Yesterday I was watching the NASCAR race and any good citizen should be doing. I wasn't paying much attention because they were introducing Kurt Bush. In the background, I heard his intro music. It was music sampled into some crap rap music but it reminded me that I really liked that song.

Anyway, I was now on a mission, a mission from god if you will. I had to find that song. Of course there aren't any lyrics to google and I'm not really good at singing instrumentals for anyone else to help me. I knew it had some trumpet in it, so I started looking that direction. I first bought and downloaded Chuck Mangione's Greatest Hits. I was hoping it was on that. No such luck. Then I bought and downloaded Herb Alpert's Definitive Collection. Strike two! After listening to my own music I was finally ready to give up after a couple of hours wasted. I figured I would eventually hear it someplace and remember where I had heard it.

So I had moved on and completely forgot about, AT LAST, and then this afternoon I was watching cartoons, as usual, and there was a commercial for that movie Cars from Pixar. Sure enough, in the background they were playing that song. At least this time I was able to Tivo it. So ya know the first thing I did was pull up the Cars soundtrack on Amazon. Nothing looked familiar on the album. I was just about ready to buy that one as well, and then something clicked. I played back the snippet of the song. It was a bit longer than the first one I heard and it had just enough to trigger something. I remembered it was from a movie, a John Travolta movie. I couldn't remember the name but then I finally remembered it was a Quentin Tarentino flick. Now I had enough to google and found Pulp Fiction. I was pretty sure about my third album purchase in the past two days. Sure enough the first track, Misirlou, there it was.

If I would have heard the guitar I would have been able to pin it to Dickey Dale or at least another Surf Rock artist, but everything I heard was the trumpet part. Well needless to say it lead me down the wrong road. What I don't understand is I'm 100% sure I had this CD. Everything I got is MP3'd and it's not in my MP3's. I'm wondering if I lost this CD in the divorce. Well I guess I was able to get some good music out of the deal anyway. A couple of weeks ago I spent about 3 or 4 hours looking for the title, artist, and album for a song that ended up being "Swing the mood" by "Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers". Well I guess I'll be able to get some sleep tonight not worrying about it. At least until the next one.

Stupid people are really dumb!

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So check this out...  Tonight I'm headed home. I'm on a road that is 6 lanes that merge into 2. I'm being a good boy driving along in my right lane cuz I know the other two are about to end. I notice this red Dodge truck coming up on my pretty fast. He's in the center lane. At this point we are all pretty much bumber to bumber in the right lane and I'm thinking to myself that someone up there is going to have to let this ass in. But I don't know if he knew that anybody needed to let him in. He just merge right on over into this brown Chevy truck. He bounced off this Chevy and into the center guardrail. He bounced off that and kept going. I waited until the guy that got hit was out of the way and then I continued on my way. Thinking this was a fairly minor accident It wasn't really needed for me to stop. I was thinking that this guy was just going down to the next crossover and turn around. He wasn't. I was a few cars behind him but when I saw him not stopping I hauled ass to catch up with him. I got behind him right as we came up to a stop light. It was red of course. He blew right through that making a right hand turn. Luckily there wasn't much traffic coming so I came right along with him. By this time I'm getting 911 on the phone. When we stopped at a red light he couldn't run I was able to get 911 a description of the truck, the guy driving, his tag, our location and direction. The 911 operator asked if I could follow him. I told her as long as I could do it safely I'd be right behind him. We continued through the light. As we approached another light, He and I were in the center lane, another witness pulled up next to me to ask if I was on the phone to 911 about this guy. I said yes and he continued to follow from the right lane. We stopped a another light. This time there was no traffic in front of us. our light was red but as the turn lane changed to green he pulled out and made a left turn across two lanes of traffic. As soon as the traffic clearned I turned to follow him. The other witness had no choice but to continue. By this time I'm pretty sure he knows I'm behind him. He's now doing about 70 down residential type 6 lane roads. I told the 911 operator that I was fine now since there was no traffic but I might have to bail if he got really crazy. About that time we were coming up to another red light where there was a number of cars stopped. I'm not sure if it was the speed, misjudgement, or him paying attention to me but he crashed a second time into the back of an SUV. The SUV driver just stopped right there with him on his bumber. I pulled up behind him to block him off. It was about that time the cops pulled up and made the stop. They pulled him out just looking for a reason to jack him up. It was at this point that I realized that the guy was either drunk or stoned. He wasn't living in the same world as you or I. Just a minute or two more and the second witness pulled up. He was in just about as much shock as I was. I also overheard that he had insurance but it was expired. I gave my statement and pretty much left from there.

Gotta have priorities

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That's right you have to have priorities. Last night the power went off here at the house. I'd only been in bed about thirty minutes when it went off. So of course when the fan went off I woke up right away. I got up and managed to find the number to the electric company and give them a call. Then I rummaged through the garage and found my jump starting battery thingy. Took that sucker into my bedroom along with my power converter out of the truck. So now I have a small amount of electrical power. Hummmm... what should I plug into it. My alarm clock, a light, maybe the refrigerator, NO. The answer is my fan of course. I was a little concerned that I couldn't turn it on high. It pulled to much power and tripped the converter so I had to run it on low. I was rather surpized I got an hour and a half outta that little battery. That also meant I got a little sleep as well. It finally ran the battery down and stopped but it was better than nothing. Ya know, as much as the power goes out here, you'd think I'd just bite the bullet and go down and buy a generator. I think next time it goes out I might go get one.