The Invisible Rope

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Back in grade school, John and I used to tie strings across the road to annoy motorists and pedestrians. Then that evolved into pretending to have a string across the road by each of us standing on opposite sides of the street and pretending to hold strings. I detail some of our string adventures on my pranks page. What prompted me to write about our string adventures tonight, though, is this YouTube video I watched this evening about two guys who do the invisible rope thing for the purpose of making funny YouTube videos. They’re pretty amusing to watch!

They’ve even got a domain at theinvisiblehope.com and a YouTube page made just for their invisible rope videos. As much as I love these videos, I still want to grab these guys by their big fat heads and scream at them, “I WAS PRETENDING TO HOLD ROPES ACROSS THE ROAD BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN, KID!” I’m such a grouchy old man. It makes me wish even more that we could have had a video camera when we were kids. John and I would have taped so many awesome things.

Speaking of prank videos, I set up a YouTube page just for PLA videos. Now I won’t have my personal videos all mixed in with PLA stuff, even if those two categories are more or less the same. The YouTube is located at www.youtube.com/user/phonelosersofamerica.

Christmas has been a lot of fun! The kids got cool stuff and so did I.

Dream Blogging

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A disturbing trend I’m noticing in my dreams lately – when something unusual happens to me, as often happens in dreams, one of my common thoughts during the dream is starting to be, “This is going to make a great blog entry!” Just like that old xkcd comic, only in dreams. I’ve had this thought at least twice this week now, that I can remember. I need to stop spending so much time on the internet.

The ice last week caused 3 snow days for the kids. So they got 3 days off in addition to Christmas break, which begins today. Oh, I mean “winter break” as the school calls it to avoid offending anyone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas. We had a couple days of good snow where the kids could actually go out and play in it. On Friday we bought some sleds and went sledding at Bryant Park for about an hour in a mixture of melting snow and mud. We were a mess by the time we left. It’s the first time we’ve been sledding since we moved to this state since the snow here sucks.

Really I need to just start driving to the nearby cities with higher elevations so we can go sledding in real snow, instead of complaining about Albany’s lame snow. There are plenty of places I could go for that. Maybe we’ll do that this week.

Friday night I tried going to the gym and they were closed “due to the weather” even though there was was absolutely no snow on the ground or ice on the roads. Lazy jerks. On Saturday we went to see Yes Man and The Day The Earth Stood Still. (Why didn’t the aliens just turn off our power to begin with instead of trying to exterminate us?) Sunday was swimming. Yesterday I downloaded Spore and put it on the kids computer and they played it nonstop. It looks really neat. They attempted to stay up all night playing it, but Payton told me this morning they only made it until 1:30am.

Oregon Doesn’t Salt Roads

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Had quite a bit of snow and ice today and there might be some more tomorrow. I wish we’d get a foot of it. I found out today that Oregon doesn’t salt their roads when they’re icy because the salt is bad for the environment. That makes me like Oregon a little more. Humans are expendable but the environment is not. This evening I drove to Corvallis to see a friend and saw quite a few wrecked cars on the way there and on the way back. One lady was way down in a ditch, looked like it was probably a creek. I love driving in weather you’re not supposed to drive in.

This morning I biked to some nearby woods to fix some problems with a geocache that the kids and I found recently. I’ve been itching to try out my new gorilla tripod for something, so I wound it around my bike frame and videotaped my trip there and back.

What Would Jesus Buy?

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I just watched What Would Jesus Buy on Netflix and it’s great. Here’s the plot summary for it: An examination of the commercialization of Christmas in America while following Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse (the end of humankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt.) The film also delves into issues such as the role sweatshops play in America’s mass consumerism and Big-Box Culture.

You know, I could take the message from that movie and use it in a way to make what I did on Black Friday seem like a noble cause. My childishness could have meaning!

I met Karalee’s parents this week. In fact, I met most of her family because it was a family reunion, but I’d met her parents earlier in the week when we came over to dinner. Siblings, nieces, cousins, everyone. We all hung around the house all day, played a lot of Wii, and a group of us went wine tasting at 3 different vineyards in the afternoon. I ate a lot of food that I’m not used to this week. Seems like I’ve met everyone associated with her at this point. We’ve bumped into every one of her friends at some point in the past year and I’ve met most of her coworkers and boss. Clearly it’s getting way too serious and I should dump her ASAP. SORRY, KARALEE!

Terminator

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One of my all-time favorite movies is Terminator 2. In 1991, I was working at Union Station Cine in St. Louis, Missouri when the movie came out. I had no idea what Terminator was and didn’t care. I wasn’t a fan of action movies and didn’t care much for Arnold. I caught bits of it while doing my ushering thing at the theater, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it.

Finally though, after it had been in the theater for a few weeks, I caught the ending chase scenes and was intrigued enough to start sneaking in as often as I could while working to catch parts of it. Eventually I saw the whole thing and I was hooked. Soon after that I rented the first Terminator movie and I liked it as well. Not as much as T2, but it was still a good movie. I ended up staying after work several times just to watch T2 in the theater again.

The reason I was working in downtown St. Louis (a 30 minute drive from my home in Illinois) was because I was hoping to move there. I was looking at apartments and other job opportunities in the area, saving money, and happily planning my new life in the big city. My parents didn’t even know I was working there for the first couple months. They thought I was going to work in Alton each day. I finally mentioned that I was when some guy from their church was surprised to see me working there and I figured it’d be best for my parents to find out from me instead of some random person at their church.

Earlier in the year, my girlfriend and I had been apartment hunting in Illinois. We’d also been talking about moving to Galveston, Texas. At some point during all of this she decided that I sucked and broke up with me, which is when I decided to move to St. Louis. The only reason I picked a city so close is that I knew my move would upset my parents and figured they could cope better if I were a mere 30 minutes away. But then I liked the scenes of Los Angeles so much in T2 that I suddenly decided I would just move there instead. And I was tired of waiting, so I put in my 2 weeks notice.

Over the next 2 weeks, I made my final preparations to move which included looking in Los Angeles newspapers for rent prices. They were insane and I knew if I drove there, not only would I blow a lot more of my saved money on gas, I would probably be homeless too. So I settled on Galveston, which I really wanted to see anyway since I’d been reading all about it earlier in the year. I left and I made it there. Thanks for the inspiration, T2!

A few years ago Terminator 3 came out. I was excited to hear about that, but then I heard they weren’t using the original John Connor, there was no Sarah Connor and James Cameron had nothing to do with it. By the time it was released, I was expecting to be disappointed and the movie didn’t let down my expectations. It had neat effects, action and a cool ending, but it just sucked overall.

Now they’re preparing to release Terminator 4, with ANOTHER new John Connor, no Arnold and no James Cameron. It seems weird to use Batman as John Connor, though I’m sure he’ll be better than that guy from Terminator 3. I actually have higher hopes for this one than 3. I know there’s a pretty good chance of just being disappointed again, but I think it could be good.

For the past year I’ve been really enjoying The Sarah Connor Chronicles on TV. It’s the only show on that I never miss. I actually watch it on TV and not hulu.com because I don’t want to wait the extra day to see it. I like all the characters in it and it’s a fun plot with them going around battling random terminators and hoping to stop Judgment Day. And they keep throwing all these random filler episodes in, like the girl Terminator losing her memory and thinking she’s a real girl with amnesia or the Terminator who’s accidentally sent to the 1920’s and becomes a real estate mongol. Silly, pointless stuff, but it’s great.

Each week, after the episode ends, I spend sometimes more than an hour reading the Sarah Connor Chronicles message board. That’s how much I like this show. Today while on the message board, I found a link to The Secret Diary of Cameron Baum. It’s hilarious stuff, especially the first couple chapters. It’s a humorous take on Cameron’s (the girl Terminator) day-to-day life. Read about her adventures in making a miniature reptar terminator for her science fair project, her failed attempts at being on top of the cheerleading pyramid, her night of big winnings in Vegas and her Terminating ants and dogs that wander onto their property. This is why I wrote this giant entry, because this diary story is cracking me up. One chapter to go…

Cleaning up my hard drive

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I’ll get this out of the way first…

Last weekend I created my own geocache called the Telephone Cache which contains a bunch of telephone-related items. 5 people have found it already. One guy went out at night and found it within an hour of it being posted on geocaching.com.

Tonight I’ve been cleaning up my computer’s hard drive. Deleted probably 50 gigs of old stuff that I didn’t need anymore, most of it video. Back in the days before YouTube, I used to find funny videos through file sharing sites like Morpheus and I would store them in directories so I’d never lose them. I had gigs of the stuff, ranging from about 1998 to 2005. Lots of stuff. All gone now. I checked a few things just to make sure they really were on YouTube and, of course, they were. I love the internet.

Found quite a bit of old stuff that I’d forgotten about and did some organizing. Put up a few new videos on YouTube. So I was sort of productive tonight, even if it was only in front of the computer.

Speaking of loving the internet, I think it’s so cool that I can check my daughter’s grades in real-time on all her classes. Every assignment in every class is logged on a website that I can log into and it’s updated every few days. When there’s an ‘F’ or a missing an assignment, I can yell at her immediately instead of waiting for progress reports. It makes being a nosy parent so much more easier. If they’d had something like this when I was in Jr. High, maybe it wouldn’t have been so easy for me to fail everything.

Earlier this week I took a screen shot of my desktop for this thread. I added a bunch of weird icons and titles. I’m only stating the obvious so nobody reports me for being suicidal or for having plans to become a mass murderer.

Skipped 2600 tonight.

Not sure what the kids and I will do this weekend. Put up the Christmas tree I’m sure.

I was doing random YouTubing today and I came across an old Disney cartoon which talks about how awesome smoking is. As much as I was ripping on Disney and Goofy a few entries back, this has gotta be the funniest cartoon ever. Just for the absurdity of the message. Better than the Flintstones smoking, even. Watch it.

It was made about 15 years before Walt Disney’s chain smoking killed him.

Two Sundays ago my back started aching. Right after seeing Bolt, for no reason at all, it was just killing me. By Monday it was even worse. Walking, sitting, sleeping and pretty much everything else was painful. Bending over was nearly impossible. I’ve never had back issues before and I’ve always been really thankful for that, especially since I’ve seen my dad and brother deal with all that forever. The pain was gone by Wednesday, but I can still feel a hint of it. I’m hoping it was just a pulled muscle or something and it’s not me getting old. It’d suck to have to deal with that all the time.

Geocache Navigator

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I know I’m being annoying about Geocaching lately, but ever since I got this new program for my Blackberry I’m suddenly really into Geocaching again. Today I spent about 3 hours biking around Albany, finding caches by myself. I think this is the first time I’ve ever geocached by myself. I found 4 caches and failed at 4 others because there were too many people nearby. I just wrote this review of the new program on some geocaching forums and now I’m going to annoy everyone else with it too. So here you go…

I’ve gone through quite a few methods of Geocaching since I started in 2004. For my first year, I lugged a full sized laptop around with me with a big USB GPS thing attached to it. Surprisingly I never dropped my laptop while climbing up rocks, through forests and around lakes. Then for awhile, I used an HP organizer, connected to a wireless GPS via Bluetooth. That was nice for a couple years, but it sure was a lot of extra gadgetry to own.

For the past year, I’ve been using my Blackberry phone to find Geocaches. It’s got built-in GPS and free Google Maps, so I just print out the geocache on paper, manually type the coordinates into Google Maps and follow the dot until I get there. I’ve tried a few Blackberry applications for Geocaching, but I never really found one that I liked. Until now.

About a month ago, I decided to look around for Geocaching software for my Blackberry phone once again. This time I came across a program called Geocache Navigator. It seemed like a nice program, so I decided to give it a try. The catch was that it would cost $5.99 per month for a subscription or $39.99 per year. I’d have to like a program an awful lot to pay a subscription for it. I gave them $5.99 to try it out for a month.

I can’t express how much I love this program. It does everything I could possibly need. When I turn on the program, it immediately finds my coordinates via GPS. Then I can click one button to find all the Geocaches that are near me. I’ll get a list that looks like this:

Check out how it lists the distance from each cache. Those numbers automatically update as I walk around. And when I click on the cache that I want to retrieve, I get to choose from these screens:


My favorite for zeroing in on a cache is the “radar” screen. From the Cache Details screen, I can read the full description of the cache, look at all the log entries and even view the unscrambled clue. The GPS claims to work to within 3 feet of the coordinates, though I’m unsure if GPS is really that precise. The map section allows me to view street maps, topographical or aerial photos.

This program makes geocaching completely spontaneous. Like a couple weekends ago I was in downtown Portland and had some time to kill, so I viewed the caches around me, picked the closest one and went to find it. It’s so great not having to put any effort into looking on the website and printing out cache info anymore. I can just whip out my phone anytime I want, wherever I am, and go Geocaching. Preparation is a thing of the past.

Another advantage this program has over using Google Maps, is that this program will keep working even when your internet goes out. I ran into a problem earlier this year when I was in the woods, using GPS and the map would no longer load because I wasn’t getting good reception anymore. The GPS still worked, but it was just a red dot on a completely white screen so it was useless. This program will continue to track the coordinates even when the internet connection dies.

Here are my few gripes about this program…

1. I can’t log my find on geocaching.com from within the program. For that, I still have to visit the website when I get home and log it like usual. I suppose I could log it from my phone’s web browser, but I’ve never bothered to try. If I could log my find, I’d never have a reason to even visit geocaching.com again.

2. The aerial and map view doesn’t zoom in far enough. When I’m using my Google Maps application to geocache, I can zoom in pretty close which makes tough caches a lot easier to find. If I’m really stuck, I suppose I could copy/paste the cache coordinates into Google Maps (since the Blackberry allows you to cut and paste, unlike some other nameless overhyped phone), but that’s extra effort. I wish the program could just zoom as much as Google.

3. The price. I really shouldn’t complain about that since $39.99 comes out to just $3.30 per month if I pay for a year up front. It’s worth every penny of that. Disregard this complaint. I just hope they don’t suddenly realize how awesome they are and start charging $10/month for this.

If you have a Blackberry that lets you use your GPS (sorry Verizon Wireless users) then you should definitely give this program a try. I’m loving it and plan to pay for a year of usage very soon. This program is spoiling me and making me wonder how I ever got along without it. You can find it at www.geocachenavigator.com for Blackberry and a few other smartphones.

The Geocaching was fun today. I discovered a few new places in Albany and found 4 microcaches. I want to find every cache in Albany, so I’m going to work on finding the micros by myself and the bigger caches for when I’m with the kids. Micros are usually in 35mm film canisters and only contain a log sheet. The bigger ones have toys and other random junk in them, which is what the kids enjoy trading for.

One of my finds today was underneath a pay phone in front of a convenience store curiously named the GPS Market. Another was hidden inside a guardrail. And the one that took me the longest to find was hanging in plain site from the remains of a hundred year old bridge. I spent over 30 minutes searching for that one. One of my failures required me to climb up a pine tree. I only didn’t because I was alone and people were around. I’m betting it’ll be much quieter there tomorrow morning though. I think I’m going to spend half the day doing this again tomorrow.

Bolt

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Went to see Bolt this weekend with the kids. I didn’t realize that it was in 3-D. I also didn’t know that the theater was going to charge us NINE DOLLARS AND TWENTY-FIVE CENTS EACH to get into a matinee. That sucked. I guess with all the movies going 3-D, that’s going to be their excuse for charging us double the price. I love going to movies and I’ve managed not to complain about ticket prices too much, but this could seriously curb my movie-going addiction.

The 3-D didn’t really add anything to the film either. They didn’t do a whole lot with it. All the glasses do is darken the screen and make your face slightly more uncomfortable. Welcome to the future! On the upside, I actually was able to see the 3-D effects. My vision has always been screwy enough to make 3-D movies completely pointless for me, but I’m guessing that wearing glasses for the past year straight has done something for me, because the 3-D worked. This is a first for me. It still wasn’t worth the crazy ticket price, though.

Saturday we hiked and found a geocache. Sunday we did some local geocaching where we failed a lot. Then I took them to see the cool fence post cache. We also found a cache in the parking lot at the movie theater after our movie was over. We’ve decided to find every cache in Albany. We’re off to a bad start, though, with our 3 failures in a row on Saturday.

That image should indicate how many caches I’ve found. The number is low because I’ve always been lazy about logging my caches. I’m sure I’ve done over 100 now, between Illinois, Montana, Idaho, Texas and Oregon. I’m going to start logging all my finds though. If you’ve never heard of Geocaching, you should check it out at www.geocaching.com. Chances are, you walk or drive by several hidden caches every day. You don’t really even need a GPS to do it, just visit the website, put in your zip code, then zoom an ariel view map to the location you choose and print the map. Or cut/paste the coordinates into Google Maps for an even closer ariel view. You can even hide your own for other people to find.

Zoom this map to your current location and you’ll see how many caches are near you. There are over 100 in my city. It’s simple, fun, addictive, GO DO IT! And then post in the comments about how awesome I am for getting you started on a fun new hobby.

Good vs. Evil

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“If I were rich I would do a lot of Geocaching and I would leave $100 bills for people to find.” -Payton, in the car today, just me and him talking about random stuff.

“We should start a Geocaching team called the GeoCrashers and we’ll go around just destroying caches and taking all their stuff.” -Emily, in the car last week, just me and her talking about random stuff.

Today the new Xbox Experience update happened. Among other things, we can watch Netflix movies on the Xbox now. Hopefully I can still get some good money out of my Roku box when I sell it on Ebay. … Just checked! Looks like I’ll get anywhere from $80 to $100 for it. I think I paid $120 for it early this year so that’s not too bad.

New & Improved Car Troubles

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This afternoon I went to make my daily run to the post office. I turn the ignition and I get a bizarre noise that I’ve never heard. It sounded like something was spinning, but the car wasn’t even trying to start. I figure maybe it’s a belt so I check those, but they all seem intact. Then I start checking fuses, but all of those are good. I look around on the internet for suggestions and thumb through the car’s repair manual for ideas, but come up with nothing. Out of desperation before having it towed to the repair shop, I key the ignition for about 30 seconds straight and it finally catches and starts!

I throw my bike into the back and leave, planning to go straight to the repair shop. But since it seems to be doing okay, on the way I decide to stop by the post office and mail all my boxes and letters. I’ll just leave the car running while I’m in there so I won’t have to worry about starting it again. As I make my turn onto the road that leads to the post office, it dies again. Luckily, I’m able to get it started by holding down the ignition for about another 30 seconds. It finally starts up and I continue to the post office. Just to make sure I don’t accidentally turn my car off out of habit when I arrive, I take the key out of the ignition and lay it on the seat. (My key can be removed while the car is running.)

As I pull into my parking space at the post office, the car dies again. Argh. I begin to wonder if I’ll ever make it to the repair shop, which is still 10 minutes away. I grab all of my boxes and go inside. This is when I realize that I’ve added to my problems by locking my keys in my car. Since they weren’t in the ignition, I didn’t grab them on my way out of the car like I usually do. Argh again.

While standing in line to mail my stuff, I come up with a brilliant plan to get into my car without having to pay for a cab ride back home to get the spare keys. I walk to the park behind the post office and into the woods and find a giant rock long, sturdy stick. I’m able to stick it into the top of the window, which was luckily down an inch or two, and press the unlock button on the other side. I’m such a hacker. I jump in and hold down the ignition for close to a minute before it finally starts up again. At every stop I’m throwing into neutral, keeping the engine revved and hoping this will keep it from dying. It works and I finally make it there.

It ended up being the timing belt. I think it’s going to be $382 to fix and I’m supposed to have my car back tomorrow. It’s a lot of money, but my monthly average is still way less than what I used to pay for car payments, so I’m thankful for that at least. Plus I thought timing belts cost a lot more than that to replace, so I actually feel like I’m getting a discount. I’m just happy this didn’t happen while I was in Portland this weekend. That would suck being stranded up there until my car was fixed.

While biking home I realized what an amazing day it was outside. Passing by a bank, I saw that the temperature was 68 degrees. It’s been in the 50’s and rainy for the past week, so it was kind of a surprise. I had a nice ride home and stopped by Dairy Queen for an Oreo Blizzard for lunch. I couldn’t have had a more perfect day for riding.

When I got home I saw the perfect ending to my day – I left the garage door open for the 3 hours I was out. I guess with all the excitement of having my car actually start, I forgot to close it as I left. I left a brand new Xbox 360, still in the box, sitting on the washer and dryer. (Not mine, it’s someone elses.) Luckily nobody walked in and stole it and everything else I own while I was gone. I left my office door unlocked too. It’s not the first time I’ve left the garage open when I left, but definitely the longest.

While I was waiting for my Blizzard, I Twittered about my car problems and Rogue Clown replied to it, “was it a medium pepperoni timing belt?” which I found extremely hilarious. It was a reference to one of the old auto parts prank calls. Thanks for making me laugh, Rogue. I needed it today.

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