Sunday, September 30, 2007

Random Thoughts: Brought to you by dog vomit

Yes. That's right. Dog vomit. You'll see.

  • Is it safe to say that the Mets have pulled off one of the most monumental
  • Last night I was up a lot longer than I'd planned. Bruiser had been sleeping on my bed when he decided to throw up, so I had to run my sheets through the laundry. Fun fun fun.
  • I've been tempted to make a joke about this sign on a message board or two, but I think it's probably just a little bit too edgy.
  • Taffy's really clingy with my grandmother. It's driving her nuts right now that she's gone to Fort Worth for a funeral. Poor girl.
  • The other kids aren't happy either of course, but they've been down this road before. They'll all be happy when she gets home Wednesday.
  • Today Craig Biggio played his last game and another bit of my childhood died.
  • The Texans are 2-2. They could be 4-0 if it wasn't for all the injuries that the team's suffered, but honestly I'm just happy they're not 0-4.
  • David Carr may have a new jersey on, but he still sucks. 7 for 19 for only 40 yards in the third quarter. I'm just amazed he hasn't been sacked yet.
  • Got to see a live hockey game last night. AHL preseason game between the Aeros and Rampage. Aeros won 5-4 and I got a game puck. Was a bit surprised they were using Wildcatters pucks and not Aeros ones, but I'm told that the 'Catters will have their 5th anniversary logo on the pucks this year so they were probably trying to just use up some of the old ones.
  • Scrabulous is just about the biggest time-waster there is online.

I'm sure there's more I could say, but I didn't get enough sleep last night so cut me some slack.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Waiting in line

Welcome to Friday Photo, a new feature where I share photos that I've taken with the world.

Petey and Bruiser in line for the bathroomStop taking so long! We need in the bathroom too!!!

Thursday, September 27, 2007

If you don't think dogs have personality, then you obviously haven't met Petey

Petey's something else.

The poor cutie's little quirks make him the butt of a lot of jokes around here, but they're also all true.

Like the other day when I was heading home from a trip to Sam's with my grandmother and, in a radio commercial for something, a lady says "Petey stopped eating and lost all of his hair" or something like that, we both agreed that if Petey lost all of his hair, he'd just roll over and die. Not from some weird condition, but just because he is so vain. He insists on being brushed at least once a day and can't stand to have a single hair out of place.

And then there's all the jokes about how you get growled at for looking at him the wrong way. Granted we don't, but if Bruiser or Taffy do it then they get growled at.

And don't cough or sneeze around him, because he WILL NOT tolerate that. You'll get barked at. A lot.

And the same for coming to the front door. If he hears a noise outside he goes nuts barking.

I swear, it's a miracle we get any quiet at all with him.

(In tomorrow's Friday Photo, see what happens when Petey and Bruiser need in the bathroom)

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

My victims may have suffered, but I shouldn't have to!!!

Apparently some death row inmates are concerned about the way they're going to die:

The Supreme Court today agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country.

The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky — Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

[...]

Baze and Bowling say the procedure inflicts unnecessary pain and suffering on the inmate.

Unnecessary pain and suffering, huh? Funny how that's a concern to you now that it's YOUR turn to die.

I'm sure Baze was concerned about Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe's pain and suffering when he shot them to death. And I'm also sure that Bowling was concerend about the pain and suffering of Edward and Tina Earley when they were shot and killed. And I'm SURE he was concerned about their two-year-old son that he also shot.

I say let 'em suffer.

Crossposted to Through our eyes

Friday, September 21, 2007

Paw Shake

Welcome to Friday Photo, a new feature where I share photos that I've taken with the world.

taffy This week it's Taffy with her thing about shaking hands.

When Sassy visited a few weeks back, I'd pilled out the camera and took some pictures of her and the rest of the kids when I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch Taffy shaking paws with my grandmother, not to mention Petey popping in and trying to lick her hand by the looks of things.

This is the picture that I planned on running last week, but Humberto had to come and screw with my plans.

As far as the lack of blogging this week, well all I can say is that I've been under the weather so it hasn't exactly been a priority of mine.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

The boldest prediction I've ever made

The Texans will finish the season 10-6.

Or better.

There.

I said it.

After seeing the way they've played today, I certainly think that it's doable.

If I'm wrong, I'll post a picture of myself naked on this blog.

What's that? You don't want to see it?

OK, fine, I won't post it.

I probably shouldn't put the world through seeing that horror anyway.

But I'll think of something humiliating to post.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

(If you don't know where that came from, watch this)

Welcome to this special Humberto edition of Friday Photo, a new feature where I share photos that I've taken with the world.

IMG_1186  
Our front yard yesterday before Humberto paid us a visit. Click any photo in this post for a larger size.  

As I sit here at my computer listening to The Who, I thought I should write a nice, lengthy post about my experiences with Humberto.

As just about everybody else, I thought that Humberto wouldn't be any big deal at all. You know, just a lot of rain and maybe a little bit of wind.

  IMG_1188
  A long exposure shot from our front porch that night before things began to get nasty. There was a light rain and some wind, but nothing bad.

I was wrong. VERY wrong.

When the 10 PM advisory came out with 65 MPH winds I had a feeling that Humberto might become a hurricane. I mean, I'm no meteorologist, but I figured that since it had intensified by 30 MPH in twelve hours it had a shot at packing a little more power.

It was about 12:45 AM when I came across the information on the web about the storm being upgraded to a hurricane with 80 MPH winds.

When it came on shore just east of High Island at 2:00 AM it was packing 85 MPH winds. I started watching the local news outlets, who were doing wall-to-wall coverage of the storm making landfall, flipping channels a lot at first and then settling on one. About 3 AM, the radar they were showing indicated that the storm's eye was heading pretty much due north into Beaumont. About that time, the lights were starting to flicker and the power dropped for a few seconds a couple of times.

About 3:30, the power went out for good. Without the noise from the TV I could hear the wind and rain from the storm a lot better, and it was pretty loud, even downright scary at times. I found out later that the local storm report put out by the NWS showed a 74 MPH wind gust at a middle school about two miles from our house and that what we were experiencing at that time was a portion of the eye wall, as the eye passed just a few miles southeast of us.

A little before 5, I remembered that my Zune I bought back in February has an FM radio, so I plugged some headphones in it and scanned the radio to listen for news. Thankfully, all the ClearChannel stations were simulcastiong with their AM news-talk sister station, so I got to hear all the information.

IMG_1222  
Our front yard after the storm had passed. The pile by the street is of stuff that had already been gathered before I thought to get the camera out.  

When the storm let up enough, I checked around to see what the winds did and saw nothing but tons of leaves and limbs, though nothing terribly substantial was laying around on our property, then took a walk around the block to see if it was safe to walk the dogs. Since it was, we took all three of the kiddos for their morning walks. The mosquitoes were already pretty bad, and they're just going to get worse over the next week or so.

  IMG_1224
  Down the street, one of our neighbors got a lot more that fell than we did.

After the dogs got their walks, I helped out with the clean-up and then decided to walk around and take some pictures of the sights. I walked down the block and then across the LIT campus to see if the MLK underpass had flooded.

What a shocker, it did. The city had also already come out and blocked off the underpass, directing all traffic to the feeder roads.

IMG_1227  
STOP! There are limbs down in LIT's parking lot!  

After that walk around, I came home, settled down, and made some phone calls to family and friends to let them know that I was fine.

After that, I decided I needed some sleep and laid down until probably about 2 PM. It was about then we found out that the official word from the electric company on when we'd have power back was "by Tuesday."

  IMG_1228
  MLK blocked off at the underpass, though I'm really not sure if three orange barrels was the way to go here.

With that, we decided to get out the generator and hook up our fridge and deep freezer to avoid the stinky mess we came home to after Rita. To stay away from being too graphic, let's just say that I'd never smelled anything that bad in my entire life. We got the freezer cleaned but decided to let FEMA handle the fridge after my cousin offered us an extra one he had in the garage.

IMG_1229  
In this shot you can see the water collected in the underpass. I would have gotten closer, but the mosquitoes were about to carry me away.  

Anyways, we got started setting up the generator when we realized that we needed another extension cord or two to pull this off, so I got sent out to pick up some extension cords and find an open gas station to fill up our gas can. My car had a nearly full tank, so I offered to take someone else's car and get it filled up while I was out and my grandmother took me up on the offer.

  IMG_1233
  The lids to some trash cans lay in the LIT parking lot. I never saw the trash cans, which seemed odd since the cans always looked to be pretty heavy.

I had heard that morning that the downtown area had power, so I headed down MLK to a Shell station near downtown, thinking I'd probably have some luck there. There wasn't even a line! I just pulled right up to a pump, swiped my grandmother's debit card (she'd offered to pay for it since I was filling up her car) and filled everything up.

IMG_1234  
Another shot of the trash can lids... and a dumpster.  

When I got in the car, the fumes from the gas can in the backseat were getting to me, so I decided to drop that off. I set the gas can by the car and went in the house to make sure that the dogs weren't in the backyard. When I opened the door, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.

THE LAMP IN THE LIVING ROOM WAS ON!!!

Our electricity was back. Since there wasn't a dire need to get the extension cords anymore, I decided I was better off waiting than fighting off the throngs that would likely be at Home Depot looking for anything and everything.

So now life's pretty much back to normal. All that's really left is to rake up all the leaves in the front yard and get them out of the way.

Quick update on our status

We're fine.

We don't have any damage, just some limbs down.

We'd lost power for about 13 hours, but got it back on about an hour and a half ago.

More to come later . . .

Late-night Humberto Blogging

 
NOAA  
Humberto on radar. (Click to enlarge)  

For reasons beyond my control (besides the hurricane at my door), I'm having trouble sleeping tonight, so I thought I'd add a late-night post since we haven't lost power.

About 12:45 AM, I got the news on the web that Humberto had been upgraded to a category one hurricane with winds of 80 MPH. The NHC later reported that it came on shore just east of High Island about 2:00 AM with 85 MPH winds. It's looking like the strongest winds, which would be a bit weaker before they got here anyway, will pass just a few miles to my southeast.

Up until a couple hours ago, we'd just been getting light drizzle, but the rain is starting to pick up now, along with the winds. We shouldn't have the worst of our winds for another three to four hours.

Since I dug out my tripod, I thought I'd try setting up out on the porch and taking a few pictures with long exposures.


The end of my street through a telephoto lens at 1:39 AM.

I'm really not sure why I decided to take those pictures, I just thought they'd look cool honestly. I'll post a few more pictures later, if just because I loved how green they made our yard look.

There are scattered reports of power outages in the area, so I'm gonna wrap this up now so I can get it up if we lose our lights.

See y'all on the flip side.

Crossposted to Through our eyes

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Blogging may be light the next few days ...

Pro Poker player Humberto Brenes, NOT the Humberto I'm talking about here.

... depending on what Humberto decides to do.

He looks like he'll be little more than a rainmaker, but there's no telling, especially if it stalls out over us like some people seem to think it will.

If I don't post here, keep an eye on my Twitter page, as I'll try my best to post updates to it.

Ideally, Humberto turns out to be just a minor inconvenience and things are back to normal here soon.

Maybe even with some cool pictures.

Regular blogging will resume as soon as is humanly possible.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Linda C. Lee

(Re-posted from 9/11/06)


NOTE: In honor of the victims of 9/11, 2,996 was created as a tribute to the victims of that horrible day with the intentions of remembering the innocent victims and not their murderers. This is my small contribution.


Linda C. Lee was the kind of person that most of us (myself included) wish we could be.

She was a graduate of the University of Maryland, a senior associate at a financial services firm, and your friend, whether you knew it or not.

Friends describe her as having an amazing ability to make friendships and having the ability to make you feel like the most important person to her, wanting to know everything that's going on in your life.

She also loved adventure, often sneaking off to New York City for the weekend with friends while in high school. As they became young women, they would try to convince taxi drivers to let them drive.

At age 34, she was attending a technology conference at the World Trade Center when it was attacked.

Her memory will live on through the Linda C. Lee Memorial Scholarship at the University of Maryland, established by Jennison Associates LLC, her employer, and her friends and family.

Never forget

Six years ago, I was a Junior in high school. My Algebra II and Chemistry classes went like normal. As usual, I was the first person to make it into my third period class, newspaper. We were going to press the next day with our first issue of the year, so I was expecting a busy 55 minutes.

We had a sub that day because our adviser (teacher) was off at the school photographer's studio shooting the yearbook cover. She asked me if I could get something she had on the computer to print. I thought "Alright, no big deal. She's got an email or something." Then I sat down and saw what she had pulled up. It was a page on CNN.com. I don't recall exactly what was on the page, but I do remember a small image on the page of the explosion from one of the planes (probably the second) hitting one of the towers.

"Holy shit," I thought.

We went to press the next day as scheduled, just with a new lead story.

Crossposted to Through our eyes

Monday, September 10, 2007

I'm calling you out. Yes, you K T.

Dear K T Cat,

Remember our friendly little wager this time last year?

Well, I was thinking about that yesterday when the Texans were beating up Kansas City.

Did you know that Mario Williams' 38-yard fumble return equals the amount of rushing yards that Reggie had the whole game against Indy? Not to mention the five tackles and two sacks.

But that's besides the point.

This year, the scheduling gods have smiled upon us and given us a matchup at Reliant Stadium on November 18th.

Here's what I was thinking...

Loser's side posts the winning team's logo on their blog. No explanation, just posting a logo that is a minimum 300 pixels wide.

Let me know if you're willing to subject yourself to the inevitable humiliation that will come from accepting this wager.

Sincerely,
Justin

P.S. Go Texans!

Saturday, September 08, 2007

A visitor

Meet Sassy.

Sassy's one of my mom's dogs. She's headed off for a weekend trip to New Orleans and asked us to watch Sassy since she's pregnant.

She's sort of like a much smaller version of another guy that's been on here.

Except that she doesn't bark at everything.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Beating it out

Welcome to Friday Photo, a new feature where I take a picture from my digital collection and share it with the world.

Houston Astros second baseman Craig Biggio beats out a double play during the fifth inning of the Astros opening day 1-0 victory over the Florida Marlins on April 3, 2006.

I just thought this photo was a cool one.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Well fuck you too, Microsoft

NOTE: After reading this, you may think that I need anger management classes or something. I probably do, but the only thing I can think of that would make me more pissed is if I'd bought an iPhone before yesterday's $200 price drop.

I tried to install the newest beta of Windows Live Writer, the program I use for composing all of my blog posts, and got this wonderful note when I opened the installer:

Um, hello, I'm the guy that shelled out $250 for the Vista Ultimate upgrade, what the FUCK did I do to you to get this bullshit.

From a little reading, it appears that the issue is the new combined installer that Microsoft's come out with that doesn't support x64 operating systems. "Yet."

Whoever's brilliant fucking idea this was needs to be drug out into the street and shot. Multiple times. And then buried in the city dump.

Yes, I know, there's a hack to get it to install. But you really fucking think that I want to fucking dig through thousands of lines of fucking code in a fucking hex editor to get the motherfucker to install? Or, even better, if I even know how to fucking do it? Hell fucking no.

Fuck you Microsoft. No, really, fuck you.

Oh, and if you weren't counting, that's twelve times that I said fuck. Make that thirteen.

Monday, September 03, 2007

My giving tech support moment

My mom called me as I was starting to get ready to go see The Simpsons Movie because she had a computer question. Here's the meat and potatoes of the talk:

MOM: What do I do if the house was struck by lightning and my DSL modem's fried?
ME: You call AT&T and tell then you need a new one.

Yes, folks, it's really just that simple sometimes.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Here we go again

In the last 48 hours, the little tropical depression that could has turned into Hurricane Felix, a category four with 140 MPH winds.

Nothing much really to say on it since it's roughly a week out *if* it comes here, I just wanted to show off the image that I'd made up for it.