Dirkus Maximus

I gotta take a moment to brag about DJ cause I got the best gift for Valentine’s Day this year.  I had been telling him that I didn’t want him to waste any money on the candy and flowers deal this year, cause 50 bucks for some flowers that will be dead by Wednesday is just a waste and I don’t need any candy, that’s for sure.  DJ went up to the YMCA and got me a family membership so that I can take the kids and let them swim and all that.  I had  been saying that I wanted a membership for a while now! We took the kids and let them swim for about an hour while I put in a couple of miles on the treadmill.  The kids had an awesome time, after that I took them all out and got DJ a steak dinner!  Not a bad day all around I would say.  I hope  everyone else had just as good as Valentine’s Day as we did!

At 11:46 last night Pacific time, my sister-in-aw Lucy gave birth to our new niece Emma Rose Thibodeaux. Emma was 7lbs, 2oz. We don’t have any pictures yet, but we’re sure they’re coming soon. Welcome to the world Emma!

OK, so I’ve moved my site back over to powweb after that nasty little bot attack that inserted a bunch of garbage code into my site. Hopefully it won’t happen again. I’ll update things Real Soon Now, probably tonight, after I get all my other plugins and whatnot working again.

Sorry about the ads and stuff, my blog was compromised, I’m hosting with a free hosting account on GoDaddy for a minute while I clean things up. frakkin’ skriptkiddiez.

“Skabz” self-adhesive bicycle innertube patches work really well on pinprick leaks in waterbed mattresses. Also, cats know when you’re mad at them and hide quickly when you curse and throw things at them.

Oh God. my legs hurt. I’m not gonna ride a bike for a month. I just got back from a weekend trip with Saad, Lance, Je’aime and Eric. I’m pretty tired and I’m gonna go crash for a bit, but you can check out the pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkusmaximus/sets/72157622360004888/

Youtube videos aren’t far behind

Race audio is on 560kHz AM, Elizabeth City NC

(removed live feed)

update 5:02pm: took down the webcast, the radio coverage was over. I might do it again tomorrow. Pics are coming, uploading them now to my Flickr account, go check them out!

Andy’s teacher has been making them write a poem every day this week for their homework. Most boys would rather dig a ditch than do something as lame as right a poem, right? Well I was pleasantly surprised by what he was able to come up with.  Leave him a comment and let him know what you think. This is Andy’s poem titled

My Betta
Fish, Fish, his name is Fish,
he swims around inside his dish.
All day long he sits right there,
he does not blink, he does not care.
Around, Around he swims all day,
he does not work, he does not play.
Slowly round the bowl he swims,
with blue and green and purple fins.
He swims into his deep, dark, cave,
in his bowl there are no waves.
A solitary life he leads,
cause no friends is what he needs.
Betta is his special name,
Aggression is his claim to fame.
Though beautiful he may be
do not put another fish with me.

 

 

I will unleash THE FURY!!!

We have been receiving phone calls for about two weeks now from a collection agency called BCR or Bureau of Collection Recovery, they are looking to collect a debt from some lady named Teresa Boswer.  Of course we tell her that we have no idea who this person is, they have the wrong number.  We are then told that our number will be removed.  Of course the very next day we get a call from this same number and it starts all over.  I am currently exploring what options I have in getting them to stop calling.  Any suggestions on how to go about this, or if you would just like to bother them too.  Here’s the info:

Bureau of Collection Recovery
7575 Corporate Way
Eden Prairie, Minnesota, 55344

The agent who won’t stop calling is at phone number 201-537-4646.

Dirk adds: These folks are seriously pissing me the fark off. As the wizard in Zelda says, “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this“. If they call at 8:30 in the morning tomorrow, I’m gonna go ‘nam on them and record it for your enjoyment.

Update: It seems one of the people BCR keeps calling for, Daniel Bowser, was thrown in the slammer by the DEA this past March for drug charges. Little bastard must have just made up a phone number to give his creditors, and happened to give them ours.

WAKKA-WAKKA-WAKKA-WAKKA...

In a word, no. No we can’t. We must have an AWESOME jack-o-lantern. Pic of Addy’s Jack-o-Lantern after the jump. (more…)

The Guitar: A perfect device for permanently maiming your fingertips.

My In-Laws, Bob and Martha, decided to get my son a guitar out of the blue a week ago. No particular occasion or anything just BLAM… here’s a guitar. He showed interest in it for a couple days or so, but lately he’s discovered that it requires practice, and that it’s not like guitar hero in that you don’t just rock out right off the bat with head-detonating awesome guitar solos. I’m thinking I’ll end up passing the guitar to one of his sisters at this rate soon. In the mean time though, I’ve been trying to learn the instrument myself.

I’ve always wanted to learn guitar, but just never really had a chance. Even though this is a 3/4 size guitar that’s just way too small for my fat sausage-like digits, I’ve been practicing pretty regularly. I’ve started to get callouses going on some of the fingers of my left hand, and lemme tell you; typing with callouses after all these years of actually being able to feel the keyboard is WEIRD.

So anyway, I zipped though the book Martha and Bob got for Andy in about 4 or 5 days, learning the basics. Keeping in mind that this is only my first week of playing a guitar EVAR, please be gentle in critiquing my recording of the last song in the book, “The Banks of the Ohio”. Thanks to the wonders of the Free open-source multi-track recording software “Audacity”, this is actually a trio, where I am accompanied by me and myself. You can download the track here, or play it embedded after the jump… (more…)

My kids realy seem to be getting into the old school 8-bit systems lately. Sometimes, all the graphics and complex physics engines in the world just can’t complete with a well-designed side scroller. Wes has been getting into the Atari too, she was tearin’ up some PAC-MAN. The Atari 2600 was a gift from our friend Barb, and the NES is on loan for some undetermined amount of time from Wes’s brother. The Atari was in perfect working order when I got it and the NES only needed a quick cleaning of the slot contacts to make it work. More pics after the jump. (more…)

What do you see wrong in this picture of my wood stove?

This only took three fairly small peices of wood.

Yeah, the front of the woodstove apears to be glowing PURPLE. In reality, there was a barely perceptible red glow to the right hand panel. This is due to the infra-red radiation from the hot metal. Most digital image sensors are sensitive not only to visible light, but to near-infrared as well. Infra-red light normally apears as a blue or purple glow. This is why most digital cameras have an infra-red cut filter. Without the IR cut filter, any picture of anything hot would be bright blue or purple instead of their normal red or orange color.

This sensitivity to IR light can be beneficial though. It can be used to look for hotspots in a stove pipe that might indicate a blockage. You can see hot spots on electric stove burners that will show you when they’re cracking and gettin ready to fail. You can also check to see if your remote is working or if it’s just a problem with your TV.

Blinky Blinky!

The funny thing is, this works better with a cheap camera! More expensive cameras will normally have better IR cut filters to reduce discoloration. Almost any camera will work though, just set the ISO low and use a S-L-O-W shutter. I used ISO 50 and a 15 second exposure for the fireplace shot above. Checking a remote is easier, you can see the infrared at almost any exposure, you can even leave the camera in “Auto”.

Halo Game on! Live webcast after the jump. (more…)

Some friends of ours have run into some incredibly bad luck recently. I’m not sure if they’d like me to share their names with you, so I’ll simply refer to them as Mr. G and Mrs B, and their children D and R.

G’s daughter R has been having issues with allergies for a while now, in an extraordinarily bad way. In fact, BOTH of the kids have some pretty fierce allergies that force G and B to do a lot of research and work to keep everyone in good health. Mrs. B took R to the doctor to have some tests done and they found mold spores in her blood. Let me say that again, just to make sure that actually stuck; MOLD in her BLOOD.

G and B quickly had their home inspected, and found out that their home was making them and their children sick with mold levels so high that they basically had to walk away from the house with nothing more than the clothes on their back and start over on Wednesday. Mr. G is set to leave on a deployment on the 9th. His family is more or less completely and totally screwed. EVERYTHING they owned, clothes, computers, pictures, toys, furniture… pretty much anything not made of glass, is a complete and total loss. The mold spores are so dense in their house that just taking things out and washing them will not suffice; everything must be either hauled to the dump or burned. Even things like tools and appliances. Anything porous, anything with nooks and crannies, anything make of cloth, it’s all infected. The mother, Mrs B, had just spent over $300 the week before on school supplies and clothes. They are also a complete loss.

They. Have. Nothing.

This is a request for everyone I know to look around you and find things that you know you could not go day to day without, and give them to this family. You probably don’t know them, but take my word for it: these are Good People. They’ve helped us out before, now it’s our turn to help them.

G’s son D needs clothes and toys. He is 10. He wears a size 8 in pants and shirts. He likes K’Nex, Lego, RC cars, etc.

G’s daughter R also needs clothes and toys. She’s 7. She wears a 6X in pants and a 7-8 in shirts. She can’t have any plush (soft stuffed) toys. Barbies, My Little Pony, Littlest Petshop, and Polly Pocket are all great. None of that “Brats” or “Divas” junk, please.

Mrs. B needs new clothes, I don’t have her size available to me. A Wal-Mart gift card would be great.

The same goes for Mr. G. He needs more clothes, and a gift card to Lowes might be nice too as he does a lot of work around the house and lost all his tools to the mold.

If you would like to make a donation to them, please either drop it off at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church on Battlefield Blvd, at the parsonage next door (brick house to the left) or give them to me and I will pass them on. Wes and I have gone though things we were planning to sell at a yard sale soon and have put aside some clothes for them, and I’m currently building them a new computer.

If you can help in any way, please do. Thank you.

-DV

Update, 9/31: With the computer I’ve given them, they now have a TV, CD player, DVD player and internet access. Some decent computer speakers might be nice though. I’m pretty sure they’d like a couple movies on DVD to pass the time. Try to keep it PG or lighter, they are fairly conservative about what they let the kids watch. Also, please be aware that they’re currently in a small apartment over a friend’s garage at the moment, and don’t have tons of room for large items. Furniture might need to wait, or be donated in the form of a Value City Furniture git card or something.

It’s on, fools. Liveblogging after the jump…

Game over, man! We had a helluva good time, playing both CoD4 and Halo3. Big props to Eric the Red, for his single grenade 3-way combo kill/suicide/betrayal. A tip from the man himself: “If you’re standing next to a teammate, and someone’s coming right at you on a mongoose, do NOT stick them with a plasma grenade.” Words to live by, sir.

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The Vista user experience testing team makes me all stabby.

Just wanted to make it clear that I farking HATE how Windows Vista decides it’s going to reboot of it’s own accord to apply updates. You’re supposed to f*cking ask permission before closing all my programs and rebooting the system you ^%#$@@ing *(&%$^$^-holes!!!. Just wanted to clarify that for you.

Apparently the only way to disable this in Vista is to change the settings for Windows Update to have it check for updates but not install them. This is freaking stupid.

Just wanted to touch base with everyone and let you know that I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth or anything. Here’s a few quick blurbs from the past couple weeks.

• Graduated yet another class of Digital Camera agents. Hopefully Tori, Shane, Ben, Gabe, Tom and Janet are surviving their first week! I’ll be checking in on them Monday to see how many ran screaming from the building.
• Was watching Lance’s Flickr and Youtube feeds for updates from his trip to the left coast. He and Liz got into Geocahing while they were out there, and I noticed that there’s a few around where we work. I might have to go hit a couple of the caches around town.
• Made a papercraft ceiling cat, who went almost completely unnoticed by Lance until I pointed it out Tueday afternoon when I spun by work for a second. CEILING CAT IS WATCHING YOU EDUCATE
• Taking a week of “honey-do list holiday” this week, been working on a new sign for my mom’s preschool most of the week, and I plan on tearing the stereo out of Wes’ car Real Soon Now to figure out what’s jammed in the CD drive and why.
• Je’aime’s back from the icy north, but I haven’t heard much from him.
• Andy went to electronics camp, and almost showed some interest in it. I might send Ashley to it next year, to see if she picks up on it.
• Washed the Pregnant Rollerskate (my Yaris) only to discover that I have splattered so many bugs on the front end that no matter how hard I scrub it, the guts will never come completely off.
• Ashley’s birthday is this weekend, we’re probbaly not going to go to Ocean Breeze water park like we had planned because of the weather forecast though. Party at my house, 3pm on Saturday. Presents completely optional.
• I showed Wes how to use all the little gadgety stuff in iPhoto this afternoon, like ordering prints, photo books, and calendars. I have created a monster.
• I called in to work and got my mom’s printer replaced via warranty exchange. “Why does it say paperjam when there IS no paper jam?!?!” She got an e-mail survey, and gave the dude straight 10’s. I also tossed in an unsolicited compliment at the end of the call to make sure if QA heard it that the tech would get a green “OUTSTANDING” ribbon.
• I still haven’t gotten off my ass and ordered a replacement phone yet. Just like I never got off my ass and got new glasses (which I need badly.)

That’s about all I can think of at the moment. I’ll actually write a real post when something happens, I promise.

We went to the White Family reunion in Windsor at Green’s Cross baptist church today with my wife’s family. The food was good, but the spirit of the gathering has definitely suffered from the loss of Nana, Paw-paw and some of the other people who really made the reunion what it was. A lot of the younger generation didn’t show up at all, and everyone there really noticed just how empty the place felt with all the vacant seats. No one really hung around, the game of kickball Wes tried to organize fizzled into an impromptu dodge ball match, and then then fizzled into nothing. The whole thing was over in just a couple hours when it used to last all day long.

It really seems like the whole idea of close-knit extended families is falling by the wayside. It’s a damn shame too, because a lot of younger people nowadays really need the support of their family, with the rising cost of living, the economy tanking, and childcare being outrageously expensive.

A few ideas were floated to try and draw the younger generation back to the fold. Things like making sure there’s more activities for the younger crowd, changing the date to a Saturday instead of Sunday, maybe giving away a doorprize or two, and even possibly moving the reunion a bit farther north, closer to where the newer generations live. Hopefully that will work out, other wise there might not be much hope for this kind of family gathering a few years from now.

On the other hand, Maybe this isn’t so much the “end” of the tradition, but maybe more of a “passing of the torch”. I’ve always said Wes would end up being the next Nana as time went on, and maybe I was right. Maybe we can re-establish this reunion as a Culp/Mizzelle/van den Brink reunion closer to the state line. Maybe as time passes we can work on trying to instill the value of knowing your family and their history to the younger generations. I dunno, maybe I’m overthinking this, but I really hope we can start our own thing here in the next few years and turn this all around. I certainly hope so.

You can catch a gallery of the images after the jump: (more…)

Pure stupid here, folks, nothing else to say about that.