Repaving

We got an interesting letter in the mail from the city on Thursday.

Starting sometime next week, they’re going to repave our street.

Our horrible, ancient, pothole-ridden street (which has to be one of the worst in town) is going to be reconstructed.

The city actually began the work today when they dumped all the limestone that they’ll be mixing into the base on the street, but that wasn’t too invasive. Take a look at the picture I posted to TwitPic.

	A shot from Google Maps Street View of a portion of our street. You can clearly see how many patches the city’s had to do over the years.

I guess the city realized, after patching potholes early this month, that the entire street needed to be done. Something I could have told them years ago.

The letter gave the impression that the work should take about a month.

Here’s my question to y’all, my loyal minions:

Would y’all be interested in seeing pictures of the work in progress?

I can post pictures here or I can not bother, it doesn’t matter to me.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Happy happy happy!

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

Bruiser’s a very happy dog!

I love this backyard!

They loved the backyard in Fort Worth when we were up there for Gustav and Ike. My aunt’s backyard is a lot bigger than ours is.

Selling fake crack is also illegal, just for a different reason

Say it with me again, "tortillas are not crack."

Two Beaumont men accused of trying to pass off flour tortillas as crack cocaine, then refusing to give refunds, were indicted on charges of aggravated robbery Thursday.

Read the story for more info.

I was going to try to make a Scarface reference and twist it into this situation, but I couldn’t make it work.

If you have anything, leave it in the comments.

Working with a new toy now

Recently I found out that the cell plan mine is attached to has unlimited texting.

Before that, I was allowed something like 250 a month.

Neither of these facts I knew.

As you can see, nobody ever tells me anything.

Anywho, I’d been wanting to get a new cell phone for a while. The one I had was never really a good one and I’d gotten tired of it’s crap.

Since I now had an unlimited texting plan, I figured I’d get a phone that was good for texting. You know, something with a real keyboard and not that joke of typing with the number pad.

So now I’m the proud owner of an LG enV².

So far I’m really liking it. The keyboard’s nice and handy, even though I look like I’m saying a BlackBerry prayer when I’m using it.

It’s kept me much more active on Twitter, which I do like.

All in all, I’m really happy with the phone I got.

The emailer’s creed

Yesterday I had to send my brother an email so he could send me some stuff.

I got a corny idea for a little gag, so I sent this in the body:

This is my email. There are many like it but this one is mine. My email is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my email is useless. Without my email I am useless. I must fire my email true. I must email straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me. I must email him before he emails me. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my email and myself are defenders of my country, we are the masters of our enemy, we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.

Of course, it was wasted since he’s never seen Full Metal Jacket.

I score a comment of the day!

The single funniest blog I read has to be The Bloggess.

On Friday, Jenny (who writes the blog) wrote a post about Barack and Michelle Obama fisting… or something.

The post made me think of a true story that happened just two days before. I posted it in the comments.

Jenny always chooses a “Comment of the day” and adds it to the bottom of a post when she updates the blog. It’s basically the best comment, in her mind, to the post.

Well, my grandmother’s doctor’s poor choice of words scored me a “Comment of the day” spot.

I’m so honored!

Should I tell her doctor about this when she goes back next week? Should I thank him? After all, I never would have scored this without his help.

The crazy thing is that I’m not a huge fan of lemon cake

Welcome to Stupid Quiz Sunday, in which I'll take an online quiz that may or may not be stupid and post the results.

You Are a Lemon Cake

Strong, sexy, and overpowering. You know who you are, and you're not afraid to show the world your fabulous self. You're confident, charming, and extremely popular.

What Kind of Cake Are You?

Have you taken this quiz? Have a quiz you want me to take? Leave a link in the comments.

Somewhat embarrassing.

I’ve been making breakfast burritos a lot lately.

Well… trying to.

I’ve never been very good at rolling a burrito. They usually tended to fall apart on me or something.

So, today, I finally broke down and Googled how do you fold a burrito, which led me to this page.

That works a hell of a lot better than my technique I was using.

Tweeting up

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

@humbearto and @whereisbryan at Monday night’s tweetup:

We had six people at the event. The others were myself, @slingerr, @crallen and @rafaelromero. Not a bad crowd for an event thrown together in a few days.

Hopefully we do a lot better next month.

So METRO cops can do stuff… just not in Houston, apparently

That lady that fell onto the tracks in the D.C. subway yesterday.

She was rescued by a Houston METRO cop:

It all happened so quickly, Houston Metro Police officer Eliot Swainson never even got the woman’s name.

Swainson, a 15-year veteran of the transit agency’s police force, was credited with saving the woman’s life Tuesday morning after she fell off a subway platform in Washington, D.C., with a train approaching

[…]

Swainson grabbed the woman’s right arm while another commuter grabbed her left arm and began tugging, trying to pull her back onto the platform. Swainson said he then saw that the train was approaching fast and there was not enough time to pull her up.

He instead maneuvered her to crouch beneath a “cove” underneath the platform. The cove is designed as a safety feature, large enough for a person to fit under to escape harm from a passing train.

Good for him. And her.

To all those loonies out there

A thought from Laurence Simon.

I couldn’t agree more.

Snow days don’t happen much here, so…

Welcome to Stupid Quiz Sunday, in which I'll take an online quiz that may or may not be stupid and post the results.

Your Snow Test Says You're Independent

You feel like something good will happen to you in the next few weeks. You love to work, especially when work is creative. You have the makings of a successful artist. You are an independent, individualistic person. You thrive when you're doing your own thing. Your biggest worry in your life is your health. You tend to be a bit of a hypochondriac. When it comes time to relax, you really indulge. You are all about your favorite comforts.

The Snow Test

Have you taken this quiz? Have a quiz you want me to take? Leave a link in the comments.

It’s Tweetup time!

On Monday I’m helping put on the first Southeast Texas Tweetup.

We’re meeting at Sertino’s Cafe in the Best Buy shopping center in Beaumont. (View map) at 7 PM. I’ll be there with my camera.

You can follow the SETX Tweetup on Twitter at @SETXtweetup. There’s also a Facebook group.

See y’all Monday!

The hill

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

Bruiser’s out playing in Fort Worth:

This hill might be fun to roll down!

A few days before we went back to Beaumont after evacuating for Ike I finally built up the courage to roll down the hill myself. I got to the top of the hill and started. When I started, Bruiser took off towards me and nipped at my neck (I’m assuming) to try and stop me.

LOLcat of the day: I have something in common with this kitteh

more animals

Those drive me mad too!

I swear I’ve done more ‘Italian’ cooking than this, but it’s good so whatever

Ever since my grandmother broke her wrist last weekend I’ve been taking on a lot more duties around the house.

Cooking, cleaning, all that good stuff.

Last night I did one of the simplest dishes I know, “Italian chicken.” It was one of my favorites as a kid.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• Chicken breasts (or tenderloins)
• Italian salad dressing

Here’s what you do with it:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Put your chicken in a casserole dish or bowl.
3. Cover the chicken with the Italian dressing. You don’t have to drown it, just make sure it’s got a good bit on it.
4. Bake until the chicken’s cooked through. About a half hour usually does the trick for tenderloins.
5. Enjoy!

I’ve also tried marinating the chicken in the dressing overnight before cooking it. It’s good either way.

The chicken comes out juicy and oh so wonderful.

Marley & Me: I got no issues, but here’s a tissue. You’ll need it.

When I saw the commercials for Marley & Me I told my grandmother we had to go see it.

I haven’t read the book, but she had and spoke wonders about it.

We finally got around to it today with my aunt (yes, the one with her head in the alligator) and cousin.

The movie has it’s hilarious moments, many of them that looked like something a certain member of our pack would do.

It also has romantic moments, as Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson(whom I’ve never been a fan of before now) played their parts beautifully.

The story, especially towards the end, also has it’s sad moments.

I’m not one to cry over movies, but I did at the end of this one. Most people, especially pet owners, will.

All in all, I’d give the movie an 8 out of 10.

Obviously they didn’t ask about how clumsy I am

Welcome to Stupid Quiz Sunday, in which I'll take an online quiz that may or may not be stupid and post the results.

You Should Fly on a Trapeze

Some people may call you a daredevil. Others would call you an adrenaline junkie. But for you, it's not about the risk - it's all about the reward. You crave freedom. And flying on a trapeze is the closest you'll get to that freedom. The rush of doing something humans weren't born to do is amazing. And you're willing to put your life in danger to experience it.

What Circus Act Should You Perform?

Have you taken this quiz? Have a quiz you want me to take? Leave a link in the comments.

Coming to you live from Windows 7

Today I dug up and installed a copy of the much vaunted Windows 7 public beta and installed it in a Virtual Machine.

I’m going to play around with it for a few days. After I get a good feel for it, I’ll do a post on my thoughts.

Crappy cell phone pictures that make you go “WTF?”

Last night the family went out to The Schooner (a local seafood place) for dinner. We had about a half-hour wait for a table, so we had some time to burn.

My aunt and cousin were in town and when they saw the alligator statue outside they started having some fun with it.

Anybody who follows me on Twitter will recognize these pictures. They’re the same ones I put up on TwitPic, just with the color levels adjusted so they weren’t so dark.

Video of the day: The next big thing from Apple

It’s amazing what they think of!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

The Onion did an AMAZING job with this, didn’t they?

On patrol

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

Taffy’s checking the perimeter of the house we were staying at in Fort Worth during the short-lived Gustav evacuation.

This sector’s clear!

That’s good to know.

Stuck with me

If you didn’t notice earlier this week, the countdown of how long I have to renew the domain for this blog went up significantly.

It now stands at 1060.

I must take this time to regretfully inform you that on Tuesday I added two years to my domain and so you’re stuck with me until at least December 2011.

Amazing

Yesterday I put 2 gigs of RAM in my computer as a late Christmas present to myself, giving myself 4 gigs total.

I think back to the first computer my dad bought 12 years ago. It had 8 megs of ram and a 1.6 gig hard drive.

My current hard drive checks in at 300 gigs.

It amazes me how much things have advanced in that time.

And yes, my computer’s running much faster now.

Video of the day: The shoplifting dog

(via K T Cat)

This is just great:

Blogging will be light

Blogging will be light for an indeterminate amount of time, as my grandmother broke her wrist Saturday and I’m being the good little grandson and helping out wherever I can.

Like being a chauffeur. And a cook. All the fun stuff.

Regular blogging will resume… eventually.

What did I do, sleep through a few months?

Welcome to Stupid Quiz Sunday, in which I'll take an online quiz that may or may not be stupid and post the results.

You Remember 70% of 2008

You were paying attention during 2008. And you remember what happened really well. You'll be able to talk about 2008 for years to come... Even when most people have forgotten what went down.

How Much Do You Remember 2008?

Have you taken this quiz? Have a quiz you want me to take? Leave a link in the comments.

LOLdog of the day

see more puppies

Well that was nice of him, wasn’t it?

Yum

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

I tried something different with a batch of cookies I baked a few weeks ago:

Standard oatmeal raisin cookies, right?

WRONG?

I added chocolate chips into the mix too. It sounds like a weird combination, and I guess it is, but they’re really good.

New Year’s resolutions are bullshit but calling them something else is totally cool

So, what the hell should I call these?

How about “shit I want to work on in 2009?” That works, I think.

I’ve got a (very) short list:

1. Work on my writing. Writing’s never been a strong suit of mine. I’ve written some gems over the past year, but I’ve written a lot of crap too. I want more gems and less crap in 2009.
2. Try to control my anger. I’m not exactly one of those psycho angry people that’ll beat the shit out of anybody for looking at them funny, but I do have a tendency to overreact to things and fly off the handle once in a while. I really do need to put that in check.
3. Learn from my mistakes. I have a tendency to sometimes be really stupid and keep doing stupid things when I know they’re stupid. Why? Because I’m stupid.

That’s all I can think of.

LOLcat of the day

more animals (click for full size)

Happy new year to all of my loyal minions readers. May you have a 2009 with many LOLZ and no FAILs.