"I assure you, she will sink..."

Not dead.

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:19:22 GMT

Seeing as how I've not posted here in ages - I wanted to reassure folks that I am not dead.

Ciao and shit...

Lewis

cute little cartoon for the child in all of us..

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:05:44 GMT

for those of you who just LOOOOVE cute things... I give you THIS

Ohhhh, there's more....check out that guy's channel on You Tube.

Happy Holidays everyone!

America.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:11:24 GMT

Seems we took back our country tonight. For too long we've allowed it be run into the ground in too many ways by an idiot and the band of idiots surrounding him. Yes, my parent's are annoyed , neigh...pissed...(Carson City NV), but they can finally identify with what I've had to live with for the past two terms. I have bright hopes for the future of this place we call home and it just goes to show that we have unimaginable power when we move to be heard. When we choose to speak up. When we choose to vote.

I've kept my "I Voted" sticker as a momento of this great day - it's on my Capo.

My hopes for the next four years is to see American "come back". I have visions of seeing all our soldiers come home and populate military bases here on our own soil - stimulating our economy. I have hopes that people who day trade will place some faith in the market and leave their stocks alone long enough for them to mature. Buying and selling is good, but it's NOT VEGAS.

In short.....I believe we have another Kennedy style of president and I look forward to it.

Well balls.

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:13:22 GMT

I should get an award or something for what I've been through and how I've handled it thus far. Yes I'm talking about my uncanny ability to land interview after interview and not get hired because of this god damn competitive market.

Thanks, Google, for hiring brainiacs and inadvertently spreading the word to each and every one of my prospective employees to do the same.

Sure, I don't have a degree, but god damn it, I'm smart and have the skills. Someone just effing hire my ass before I turn f---ing fifty already, I have plans for F--k sake.

Faaaaak! Give me a break already!!!!

Yesterday.....

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:51:38 GMT

This Happened.

So much for Benicia being that Idyllic little town - after talking to a few business owners, it turns out that this shopping center has been targeted before.

Oh, and the getaway car....sitting right behind my car in the parking lot. If I hadn't decided to provide info for a music shop customer on a microphone, I'd have been in the path of the fleeing gun men.

Whew.

Another B-Day!

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:55:15 GMT

Happy Birthday and stuff to charlottesmtms

Barenaked oops.

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:30:43 GMT

Steven Page, vocalist and guitarist with the Barenaked Ladies was arrested for cocaine possession.

This hits me in an interesting way as I got to meet the man and chat guitar tech with him last month. He actually recognized ME when I got to the autograph table, primarily because he was instrumental in advising me when I was considering the purchase of my Guild electric guitar.
With this connection, this sort of hits me, as I said, interestingly. One might think - "wow, a rock star with drug....and the sun rose today, what else is new?" Me, I think like this....he has hit a rough patch in his life with the divorce and such. Live-devastating events such as this cause people to make decisions they normally wouldn't make. Some may say, "he was 38, he should have known better" - ME? I say "I'm 42 and I'm still making some decisions that I often regret" -

But this is how we learn, no?

As a fan, as a BNL Family Member - I choose to feel for the guy and when I run into him on the cruise next February I plan to simply offer him my support in any way i can manage.......starting with sending him cookies and some form of hug from Lyssandre and myself.

there...it's off my chest.

Seems that I'm blessed

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:14:38 GMT

...By blessed, one might think, charmed, lucky, fortunate, or downright in the right place at the right time.

That's me.....with diagnosis, that is.

First, it was the asthma paired with allergies hayfever, and that pesky deviated septum, all of which knocked me out of a life time of being in a uniform for the USAF.

Later, the psoriasis - had to wear up to 22 band-aids one time.

Then, in recent years, a bout with high blood pressure during the dot bombs...then again, who didn't have that.

Cap it all off with ESRD (End Stage Renal Failure) - this diagnosis came just one week before the company I worked for folded...then again who's company didn't fold during the dot bombs.

Last year, about the same time that I had the good old "pit stop" that us 40 year old men get to endure, it was revealed that I had Crohn's Disease - (who ever got to name that actually used their own name? eww...)

And yesterday - Diabetes.

Everyone aboard the affliction train! WHOOOO HOOOO!!!!!

Euro gas prices in Europe.....

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:51:44 GMT

Exchange rate - One Euro gets you a Dollar and fifty six cents...

Hmmmmm.........

Ahhhh.......

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:09:32 GMT

Here I am in Benicia, CA - where they roll the sidewalks up at 7:00 and people walk their dogs all over the place. The wife and I decided to have a nice bike ride today, but upon exiting the house, we noted the quality of the air from the fires that I didn't know about (we avoid the news, most days...kinda for the same reason that Roxanne doesn't read the paper.....)

...so, it was back home and indoors for a good 4 hour nap for me!

After The Venture Brothers, we went down town and walked to the pier. This place is calm. It has a wonderful calming affect. And the people! We ran into a few folks walking their dogs and they all didn't mind letting Lyssander get down on their level for a good face washing. In fact we had a nice chat with one of them about the town and how they'll look for excuses for social gatherings. They also mentioned that the town put a moratorium on how many Starbucks can be here! As a result, there are only 5, (rather than 20), three of which are within a mile of each other and of those three, two are 70 yards apart - one in a Safeway and one in it's bloody parking lot!

That said, we're looking forward to the parade and street dance on the third! Such a great community is this place.

We made the right move.

direluciors is OLLLD!!

Tue, 13 May 2008 12:57:23 GMT

</b></a>direluciors is closing in on being one year closer to death.

Happy Birthday, dude!

A new start....

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:05:51 GMT

Right now I'm just waking up here on my fourth day in Benicia and I'm thankful
that it was me and not my cat who did it this time. I notoriously wake up early
and this time, at least it's four in the morning and not two forty five. It
took longer than expected to get internet and phone ready but now that I have it,
I'm finding myself still using Earthlink because when Comcast did the install,
they didn't bother to let me know how to access things like web hosting pages,
or for that matter, how to set up my new email, LOL!

I'm not complaining, though, my connection speed is "ludicrous" speed
with upload speeds in the 2 - 3 Mbps range. yeah....ludicrous. Downloads at 16+....DAYmn....

Benicia is great. To give you an example, we had a knock on our door on Sunday.....correction,
the doorbell rang.....(this is a foreign thing to someone who's been an apartment
dweller for so long)......and it's three girls informing us that they are going
around the neighborhood walking dogs and could they walk ours! LOL! Now we HAVE
to get a dog! perhaps two....a greyhound and a whippet - 'name them "fast
food" and "small fry"....suggestions?

I am also enjoying the peculiarities of being the master of a new domain....that
domain being the garage. I am beginning to understand the psychology behind nagging
wives who get on their husbands for cleaning such a place as it's just asking
to have "stuff" tossed into it as the answer to "honey, clean up
that mess in the den". (Cut to a flying cardboard box landing unceremoniously
onto a stack of other boxes in the garage) "all cleaned up dear!"

.........Ahh bliss.

Cooked the first dinner....a you-bake pizza....last night. 'Bought it at Raleys
down the hill and devoured it on the couch. Yep, we're home now.

While running errands yesterday afternoon (after the following people left); Comcast
guy, the AT&T guy and the Plumber guy (a very cool dude who's coming back
for BBQ while his fixes a ceiling), our decision to move into Benicia rather than
Vallejo way reinforced by taking a back route to the local Smart and Final store.
Lemme tell you, nothing exposes the bare armpit of a town like driving through it's
"historic district". No trees, power lines all over the place and a very
industrial feel over all. No wonder they're bankrupt. Funny thing about that,
the state issued 80K to the cities of Vallejo and Benicia for promotional development.
Benicia launched a program called "Benicia In Bloom" and has taken positive
steps towards enriching it's community.

City leaders in Vallejo can't seem to locate those funds......innnnnnteresting.

The word I think I'd use to describe this pace is "Ideallic". The
attitude and the atmosphere just brings me back to my own childhood in the early
seventies. There is an aire of trust here as well, the water tastes like it did
when I was a kid living in Milpitas back when Highway 327 made a dead end into a
fruit stand. People are nice and they take the time to smile at you when you walk
down the street. At a four way stop, people "wave you through" and the
more I liev here, the more I know that I'm back home.

Now that we have a huge back yard, I could grab some gardening plastic, lay it out
on the back yard and just slip and slide! I haven't slip or slid since I was
a kid! (man, I may be in for a rude awakening as I'm not made of cartridge anymore....hmmm
perhaps we get a couple floating pool toys to slide upon as well.....

Okay, my coffee maker is beckoning me...

Hmmm.....This or THAT?

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:56:47 GMT

Noelle and I took yet another trip to Benicia this weekend to look at places to live - Ordinarily we'd be looking at properties for sale, but our rationale is that if we are living in Benicia, California for a year first, not only can we decide if the town lives up to what we've experienced there thus far - in a word, "Idyllic". (Click the "minus" symbol in Google maps to see were it is in relation to San Francisco, BTW) We had a list of addresses and a pocket full of hopes when we showed up at the first address, which was a duplex. For a long time I had a mindset against Duplexes because of that adjoining wall, but even before the owner arrived, I studied this place and it didn't look to have more than 10 feet of wall connecting the two units, and even then it was "hallway" touching "Kitchen" and the living spaces were upstairs where no wall touches anything.

My comment after making that discovery was "I can see the Christmas lights on this thing already"

The owner let us take a tour of the place and we were very impressed, indeed! The master bedroom is above the two car garage and matches those dimensions. HUGE. The other two rooms were also ample in nature and I haven't even talked about the master closet. Let's just say you can play racquetball in every space in this duplex, including the closet.

The only thing wrong with it is the kitchen counters - little four inch square tiles a-la 1975 mocha, mustard and rust colors with dirty grout. Countering that little foible would be the brand new appliances everywhere, including a washer and dryer in the garage (the fridge, does need replacing, though) Then there's the monstrously large back yard with a prolific apple tree, lots of grass, sun sun sun and a raised garden bed. The back of the house borders a quietly traveled road, and the front of the house has a sizable yard and even bigger 4 car driveway which terminates into a very quiet coldasac! I noticed something I hadn't heard since my childhood while I was standing in the front yard.

Birds in the trees singing - this is something we don't get where we are now - we get loud screaming squirrels, helicopters, screeching tires, sirens, the muffled bass of "boom boom boom" cars driving by occasionally accompanied by the sound of arguments, car alarms, and if we're lucky, gunfire.

Birds? This is bliss.

...and we had four more places to look at and even then, we asked for an application an guaranteed that owner that if we moved in, she could look forward to Home Baked Apple Pies & Jam, a new counter in the kitchen, and newly-landscaped front yard. (We're handy that way)

Noelle and I agree on very little when it comes to home design, decor and architecture and that thin band of happiness usually revolves around the "very expensive" (what can we say, we have good taste, LOL!). We agreed that this place was, for the day, "the top of the list".

upon looking at the other places our minds kept reeling back to that one.

Now here's the kicker. Benicia used to be a military base. It's built on a narrow strip of land between a freeway and the WATER (as can be seen by that map I linked you all to above). What makes this good is that the place can not longer experience vertical development or urban sprawl, and in the places it has done so, it's been up on the other side of the "hill" the town sits on, (which ALSO has a water view!). First Street has everything you could need, the Fourth of July in this town is so Norman Rockwell, it's not funny, and if we want to see the city, it's only a half an hour away!

In short, we faxed off our application today and I'm crossing fingers and organizing the house for packing.

Now the down side.

The deposit and first month's rent will pretty much wipe out our savings for Ships and Dip 5 - FOR NOW. So tentatively, we regret to announce that we may not be on the ship next year....but CROSS YOUR FINGERS for us, okay? Moving to a new town my just provide me with the right job opportunity - and also factor in the fact that I'll be that much closer to my voice over training school. Once i start getting gigs in that industry, I feel confident that I'll be able to fund the cruise singlehandedly.

READ THIS for a better feel of what the town is like...

Here are some of the sights; (enjoy!)

Shops like this one dot the whole town! (architecturally speaking, that is - very quaint!)

The old capital building

The View!!

This is a slice of what the 4th of July must look like

The Military buildings left over from when the town used to be a base...

"But I'm not actually a size 14!!"

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:46:31 GMT

Ever find yourself in a store tearing your hair out because the only size you seem to fit into comes in ugly clothes or worse than that, there is something there that is very attractive, but it's made for people who could just as well be residents of Munchkin Land?

Read on...

Vanity Sizing

I ganked this of the net and thought I'd share it with ya.

Sigh.

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 15:54:01 GMT

Lyssandre and I have made the FIRM decision never to birth our own children because of a vast number of medical issues that I wouldn’t DARE pass on to anyone. That and there are plenty of children out there who could stand being taken in and loved just as much.

So with this philosophy, our pets ARE our kids.

Our Pasha, our daughter, is mortally sick and we have to put her down today.

Lyssandre has posted about this and I want to thank all of her TRUE friends who went out of the way to offer support to her as Pasha is her little girl and has been for fifteen years. We have another cat called Muughi and he’s been on insulin and two different drugs for many years now. He’s slow, lethargic, adorably stupid and just plain worn out.

Pasha, on the other hand, runs up and down the stairs, through the whole apartment at break-neck speeds only to wind up in the back yard to roll over and scratch her back on a rock – and then repeat this over and over again until she trots up to you with her tail up and mews “look what I just did!” in her own little language. She’d sense when you were unhappy and cautiously climb down from her little perch on the couch and say “Mmmrrr? Mrrr? Mrrrrrow?” and climb into your lap, knowing that you need her. She’d eat anything. Cheetos, chips, peas, corn, (so long as they’re coated in some kind of meat juice), and of all things bread. (?) Whenever some morsel hit the floor in our place it was HERS. And every night she’d follow us up to bed and situate herself in such a manner as to hog the whole bed. She’s a seven-pound cat fer cryin’ out loud. Lyssander would jingle the set of keys we have for the mailbox and it didn’t matter where Pasha was in the house, she’d eagerly trot up to her and escort her across the walkway to the edge of the fence line that demarks the parking lot from our property and then wait for her to return before darting back into the house, as if to say “I win again!”

Pasha also knew what day it was. Wet food days were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and like clock work she’d wake us up to let us know about it. She had a lexicon of feline vocal expressions that she’d use to let you know how happy she was or “exactly what she thought of you”. I am convinced that she understood English too. Damn smart cat. I once picked her up after she was being bad once and I explained to her in very decisively simple sentence that she should behave. I followed this up with, “I’m going to put you on the couch now and I want for you to get on your pillow right there and think about what I said, okay?”

I’ll be damned if when I put her down, she looked up at me with that “Eff-You” look in her eyes and slowly slinked up onto her pillow – looked at me one more time turned three times and laied down, affixing her “I’m going to make you feel guilty for what you just said” gaze right at me. I couldn’t take that for longer than 20 seconds and had to pick her up and give her cuddles.

I’m a softie.

If anyone came up to me and pointed at the spry little thing and told me that she’d be the first of the two cats to “go” I’d have laughed in their face. Sadly, Kidney disease in cats is one of those things that if you don’t know how to spot it, it silently hits you all at once – take it from someone who knows first hand.

The poor little thing tried to tell us over the past month with her openly yowling in the hallway upstairs, waking us up three times a night and such. When her coordination started to go, she started stumbling around the house and we thought that it was because she was just getting old. She’s 17, which is downright geriatric to humans. When she stopped showing interest in her favorite foods, (tuna, milk, beef, pork and the thing that spoke volumes to me, anyway, CHEESE), that’s when we started to worry. She lost over two and a half pounds, which on a 7-pound cat – is dangerous. That’s when we took her to the pet hospital just before Christmas, but it was too late.

I am – so – saddened, even to unexpected sobbing through all of this as not only am I watching Lyssandre go through this trauma – and I can’t do anything to stop Pasha’s progressing deterioration – but I’m loosing my little girl.

I have been taking many pictures of her over the past couple days, but the images I capture are of a diseased Pasha who lacks the strength to groom herself anymore. I have a lot of other images of her and have opted to post those which deptict her in a better light, of her in her prime.

Please visit.

I have posted elsewhere on this and have received advice ranging from “just grieve” to “get more kitties and start new memories”.

For now, we grieve.

...EDIT...11:52 AM

Rest in Peace my sweet little angel....

Pasha "Paws" Nowosad -1990 - 2007

Pasha "Paws" Nowosad

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:08:42 GMT

This past week - typically a joyous holiday, has been a week of heartache and denial for us here in Mountain View, California...

Pasha, who is our 17 year old cat, companion, (and since we never plan to have children), our "daughter" was admitted to the pet hospital two for two days before Christmas.

Prognosis = Kidney failure - Creatinine was at 12 and the B.U.N. was off the chart at over 200. For those of you who know anything about kidney disease, these numbers are not good in a cat.

Having been a kidney transplant recipient for over 5 years, I'd give anything to get Pasha back to good health, but she also has a heart murmur so even if we were able to do a transplant for her, (and yes, veterinary technology has advanced to that stage now), there is no guarantee that she'd survive the anesthetics.

Perhaps I'm venting, perhaps this is nervous energy, but I've spent all morning digging up images of her for my website and I just need someone to talk with on this. I've never been so attached to a cat before....

I'm gonna miss my sweet little girl.....

Ho Ho Ho - What's your Living room look like?

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 07:34:55 GMT

Object lesson number one.

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:48:10 GMT

....If you are going to be bad before christmas, do it at someone elses' house....read on....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071216/od_afp/canadainternetdrugchristmasoffbeat

Happy Holidays everyone!

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:36:43 GMT

A gift to you all from a friend of mine in Scotland and I.
He provided all the art and I did some tweaking to fill it out.

Please enjoy Barenaked Ladies holiday song "Footprints" from their album;
Barenaked For The Holidays

Bang Pow Pop--P'TAANNNG!!

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:28:14 GMT

Yesterday I got the opportunity to fire an M-1 Garand WWII rifle! In the middle of the desert with no range master, the rapid fire thing is completely acceptable and let me tell you - that weapon can spit out 8 rounds pretty quick before the clip does that little "piinnnng!" thing. I also got to fire a round out of a fifty caliber musket my dad made from a kit a while back. We were loading the ball into the barrel when the ball got jammed about one foot down. we took the weapon home and tried to extract the ball with no avail. So we got a bit of wooden dowel and used it as a more sturdy ramrod, shoving it into the barrel, inverting the weapon and using the wait of the weapon to "assist" the ball into a more appropriate position in the barrel.

This worked and we drove back out into the desert to fire just one round off. The general rule is this - drive until the road is gone and go another five minutes. Well the exception to the rule is this - drive until you find a major appliance abandoned in the sun with no bullet holes in it yet.

That Kenmore washer never saw us coming.

the ball for a black powder weapon is about the size of your pinky-nail.

The hole it left in that poor washing machine was big enough to put a polish sausage into.

Then there was the exit hole.

Wow.

Let's just say that I hope I'm never reincarnated as a soldier during the civil war because a hole like that in my gut would just suck....actually it might well literally "suck"!

Sufficient to say, the experience left me invigorated and concerned that I may have lowered my standing with Kenmore in some white trashy, out-back way....:)

Oh and if you want to hear what I'm listening to right now it's actually not BNL for once! Here, Click me for Matt Wertz - "Carolina"

Dog gets it.

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:38:42 GMT

Hi all,

We all know what happened to Dog the Bounty Hunter...and if you subscribed to my blog ages ago, you'll know my disdain for the man....well.........Here is a news article that was posted in Australia which details the conversation between Dog the Bounty Hunter and his son....I do have something to say about this afterwards.....

In Australia your TV show gets cancelled because of low ratings. In the US your show gets cancelled because you use inappropriate language in a phone conversation with your son, who records you and sells the tape to The National Enquirer.

The speaker was Duane "Dog" Chapman, the star of Dog the Bounty Hunter who was trying to persuade his son to give up his girlfriend.

This is what Chapman said: "I don't care if she's a Mexican, a whore or whatever. It's not because she's black. It's because we use the word nigger sometimes here. I'm not gonna take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some f---ing nigger heard us say nigger and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine. Our career is over! I'm not taking that chance at all! Never in life! Never!

"If Lyssa [Dog's daughter] was dating a nigger, we would all say 'f--- you!' It's not that they're black, it's none of that. It's that we use the word nigger. We don't mean you f---ing scum nigger without a soul. We don't mean that s---. But America would think we mean that.

"And we're not taking a chance on losing everything we got over a racial slur because our son goes with a girl like that ... So, I'll help you get another job but you cannot work here unless you break up with her and she's out of your life."

The Enquirer quoted the conversation on Wednesday, and on Friday The Wall Street Journal reported that Yum Brands, which advertises Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut on Dog the Bounty Hunter, had withdrawn its commercials because it found the reported language "despicable" . Then the network did exactly what Chapman was trying to avoid.

Now then.....MY side of this story.......

If anyone remembers the episode where he traveled to the SF bay area to capture a guy named Samu Iosia, here's the rest of the story.

I spotted the guy on his website with the word REWARD stamped across his face. I did three days of research and FOUND the guy.

Thinking that they were serious about the reward, I called Duane Chapman with some information. That afternoon he called my house and advised that I not approach him as he's a dangerous criminal. He also mentioned that he wished that he had someone like me on his team. After that I forwarded the dossier I assembled, I heard pretty much nothing for a month.

Several email exchanges later over the span of three more months, I finally received a very barbed and threatening email from Beth telling me that they never posted a reward notice! and; "how dare you try to take food off my kids table"

They very conveniently pulled that reward image from their site, proceeded to SF, and caught the guy, claiming that all the information that I provided was provided to them by a family member. Every image they used in that episode, I GAVE THEM.

My last words to them in an email were "Fine - It's in God's hands now". Since then he was arrested for an illegal bounty somewhere (I forgot where), and now this.

Who's laughing now?

Want to laugh more? Click me for the WHOLE thing...

IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS - Another Qlippit video brought to you by yours truly

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:35:22 GMT

Here is yet another installment of Qlippit-driven videos
....Man I love my job!

"Qlick" away and enjoy!

If I Had A Million Dollars

Why Say Anything Nice? - a "VQ" by Qlip Media!

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:51:00 GMT

Why Say Anything Nice?
by the Barenaked Ladies

This is a Video Qlppit I spent many hours of time farming images to make. Please enjoy and check out our software - it's free!

Scrubs - Everything Comes Down To Poo

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:01:29 GMT

Possibly one of the most wrong things I have ever enjoyed

Scrubs - My Musical rocked tonight!

In which we are bent over a barrel....

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:30:26 GMT

Should you find yourself in the unique position of being a 1099 contractor looking for a way to have someone process your payroll, I recommend using any other service than MyBizOffice.

They are currently out of compliance regarding their payroll and termination practices.

I could go on, but I'm sure my lawyer would object.

there could be a rant here, but why bother, I know they are wrong.

I could let my blood pressure skyrocket over all this, but that would damage me.

No, I'd rather let the Department of Labor send a nice little AUDIT their way instead while I sit back, eat popcorn and enjoy the fireworks and wait for the inevitable "penalty fees" to arrive.

Off to have some coffee now....