Was at Walgreens this morning and noticed some handheld fans that had a strip of LEDs built into one of the blades to display messages. This normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal except that these things were only $3.99 each. So I bought one, resisting the urge to buy one for each of the kids too. I immediately put it to good use by making it display PLAish things.

Here’s a video of those

And here’s Payton’s message

I’m sure I’ll think of some kind of evil use for this thing. I was thinking of putting it in my back car window with a button on the dash to make it display messages to drivers behind me. I could cause all kinds of road rage with it! Or maybe it could just display messages from my living room window. Anyone have any ideas for it?

Cellular reception in the mountains of Idaho was a real bitch, but some antenna hax0ring fixed things right up. I’m back in Oregon now after 6 fun-filled days of Idaho.

Today I went to the post office to find a nice surprise - my Oregon license plates! After about 10 months of living here, I’m finally an official resident. Now people on the road won’t be able to yell, “Hey moron, go back to Illinois and learn how to drive!!!” anymore. They’ll have to stick to generic obscene hand gestures and stuff.

Not only did I get license plates in the mail, but I also got new checks for my checking account. I never bothered getting new ones since I only use checks to pay bills and rent and they never seem to care if I have an Illinois address on them. But a couple weeks ago they ran out so I had to order more and I put my new address on them. I’m feeling really Oregonianish today.

In sadder news, my bike was stolen a couple weeks ago. Right from my fenced in patio. I’m pretty sure kcochran did it since he let it slip that he’s been stalking around my house lately. I want it back, kcochran.

I’m now officially averaging one stolen bike per year. Last summer someone stole my bike from our deck. I didn’t really care too much about that one since I didn’t want to lug it to Oregon anyway. Plus I’d owned that one for 5 or 6 years. This one I’ve only owned for maybe 5 months. Luckily it was a very cheap bike so it’s not a huge loss. But it’s annoying that I have to DRIVE to the post office and everywhere else now.

And I can’t believe it got stolen from my patio when I never lock it up anywhere in public. I leave it sitting in front of the mall, at convenience stores, at Wendy’s, the bank, the post office, etc. I never lock it up. But the one place it finally gets stolen from is my fenced-in patio. At least they didn’t take off with the kids’ bikes. I’ve been padlocking the gate since that happened. Next time I’m going to buy a crappy old used bike from a thrift store instead of a clearance bike from Target. That is, unless kcocran decides to return it before I get around to buying a new one.

I’ve used Yahoo email for about 8 years now. And I’ve noticed that when I’m actually using their email a lot, I get tons of spam. Hundreds of messages per day. All addressed to brad_the_carter at yahoo, not to the few email addresses that I have forwarded or check via POP3.

But then when I stop using Yahoo and start using another email service, like I’ve done recently, suddenly I don’t get much spam in my Yahoo account anymore. Today I’ve gotten about 25. That’s quite a drop from the usual 200 - 400 per day. It all goes directly into the bulk folder. And it’s all addressed to my Yahoo address.

Kind of makes me wonder if Yahoo just sends everyone tons of bulk email, based on how much their account is used. Maybe to make it look like their bulk filters are really useful? I noticed this last year too, when I used Outlook for about a year instead of Yahoo.

So Tuesday I drove to San Francisco, which took about 8 or 9 hours. Jammie occasionally IMed me how many miles she had left to go from Los Angeles and it almost always managed to have the same numbers of miles to go that I did. Once she arrived, we took a taxi to see the fireworks.

Looking at a map, we decided a 25 block walk back to our hotel would be nice. We forgot that San Francisco is nothing but really steep hills. We quickly found out that 25 blocks would take all night so we called a cab. Taking a cab in San Francisco is like riding a roller coaster. Which I sort of enjoyed and Jammie didn’t.

The next morning we woke up early, took back Jammie’s rental car and then picked up CountyKid. Did random stuff all over San Francisco for the rest of the day. Dropped off my car at the hotel, took a cab to China town, walked to a pier. I don’t even remember where all we went. Here’s a few pictures from when we ended up in the Crazy Caps store:

Countykid brought along about 100 fliers offering Free Cactus and explaining phonelosers.org so we started handing those out in all the tourist areas. Managed to get rid of all of them while making lots of tourists confused.

Eventually ended up back in our hotel room. While we were in Chinatown we bought 6 boxes of Pops. You know, those little white things that pop when you throw them on the ground. It was 100% Jammie’s idea to buy these just so we could throw them at people on the sidewalk from our 8th story hotel room window. She likes to pretend she’s innocent and never does anything wrong or illegal, but then she instigates stuff like this. Nate and I had lots of fun throwing Pops at the people below. We finally quit when too many people were looking up and noticing us.

As CK & I were waiting for Jammie so we could leave, we were listening to the hotel frequencies on my scanner. We heard a voice say, “We need towels sent to room #612.” I immediately called the hotel from my cell phone and asked for room 612. I told the man who answered that due to his reputation, we’d be charging him $29 per towel. He was very upset about this and asked why and I told him he KNEW why. It escalated and I finally told him I had to go because I had customers at the counter, then I hung up on him.

Soon after that we walked down 2 flights of stairs to the 6th floor so we could pass by his room and see if there was any action/fist fights. There wasn’t but we passed by the man in the hall. I said hello to him to confirm his voice and then Jammie dawdled behind to see if he went into room 612.

Dropped CK off at a bus stop on Market Street and then drove to a place called Asia SF to meet LogicBox. A friend recommended Asia SF to us, which is some kind of transvestite bar/restaurant with lip syncing shows. We spent a few hours there, catching up with LogicBox before driving him home. I hadn’t seen LogicBox since about 2000 and Jammie had never met him before. It’s always bizarre that Jammie knows ALL of my online friends, usually better than I do. Yet Jammie and I have rarely spoke to each other these past 10 years. Anyway, was great to see LogicBox again. Here’s a picture of us, along with one of the dancers looking like a mannequin.

Thursday we went to The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, CA. It’s only of those places that claims to be built on top of a mysterious force that seems to bend time and space itself. Balls roll uphill, people lean in odd directions. It has nothing to do with the fact that the house is purposely built out of proportion and completely slants about 20 degrees. It was a fun place, though. Lots of neat optical tricks.

Next we went to a place that LogicBox recommended - The Winchester Mystery House. The tour lasted for an hour and was really interesting. This crazy old lady spent 38 years constantly adding rooms to her house to fool spirits. Must have been some really retarded spirits. Here is the story of the Winchester Mystery House. It’ll be the strangest story you read all day.

Next we crossed San Francisco for the last time, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and then visited the redwoods. Only stayed there for about 20 minutes, then attempted to find the interstate only to get lost in some very curvey mountains. Eventually found the interstate, drove for awhile and then found a Motel 6 for the night. Drove straight through the next morning and made it to my house around 3:30pm.

Yesterday I set up a photo album program on my website. It contains all of our San Francisco pictures. I’m probably going to start dumping all of my photos into it.

Yesterday we attempted to go blueberry picking in Corvallis. It’s the 3rd time we’ve tried this year and they’re always closed for some reason. So it’s Saturday at 4pm and they must be open, right? Nope. The guy told us to come back on Monday. As we drove away, I rolled down my window and grabbed a handful of blueberrys. Then we went to another place and picked tons of raspberries. And Jammie was able to at least BUY some blueberries at that place.

Last Monday I put out a new Big Beef Bueno. Go listen!

Jammie & me & the kids watched both of the old Problem Child movies today and yesterday. Anyone remember those, from the very early 1990’s? Then we started looking up the actors that played Junior & Trixie. (Trixie was the problem child girl from the 2nd movie) Not only do they both have Myspace pages, but they’re on each other’s Top 8 lists. AND they’re staring in a new movie together soon. First movie Trixie has done since her Problem Child movie.

Junior: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=6179796

Trixie: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=33262853

Woke up at 6:30am because of rain pounding on the window. Was a little surprised since I didn’t remember rain being in the forecast this week. I got up to start packing for my trip to San Francisco and the downpour continued. Then I got a surprise - thunder and lighting. Not wimpy thunder, either. Super loud, house-shaking thunder. It ruled. In my 2 - 3 total years of living in Oregon, I’ve never heard a thunderstorm here. I seriously didn’t think they existed here. Soon after that it started hailing and the power went out 3 times.

I got everything packed and was on the road by 7:30am. And I was quite disappointed to find the donut shop closed. I had to settle for some gas station powdered donuts. The trip was uneventful and traffic was light until I got into San Francisco. There was a wreck I had to maneuver around right before I crossed a large bridge. After that, about 5 motorcyclers flew past me going way too fast. Just a minute later one of them got into an accident ahead of me along with 3 other cars. I passed right next to the motorcycle and it was really fucked up.

I continue on, past the wreckage and I see the other 4 motorcyclers stopped in the left lane, looking back. Finally they decide to just wrong way on the bridge to get back to their friend. So they all pass me going in the wrong direction. Guess I can’t blame them, though.

Made it into San Francisco and found the hotel easily enough. I can’t check in until Jammie gets here and I think she’s still a few hours away from here, driving up from L.A. I took a walk around the neighborhood for awhile, ate at a diner and now I’m in the hotel’s lobby, catching up on emails and LJ.