The blog that's gotten one comment ever! Thanks mom!

Monday, July 30, 2007

RIP, Calypso the kitten

My friends Jer and Steph adopted a stray from a shelter that needed a good home. Turns out, all they could do was to give it love and comfort in it's final days. Although Calypso seemed a bit under the weather when they adopted her, she was pretty far gone with leukemia, and the poor soul didn't last it's first weekend. You can pay your respects here. Janie and I met the kitten briefly on Saturday, and our hearts go out to Jer and Steph.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

I had no idea...

...that the Harry Potter books were filled with Satanic references! At least according to this article. Now, I'm afraid I have to completely disagree with Lurlene Tyranna Shores, the learned author of the article. Sometimes, a name is just a name. Sometimes, there's no deeper meaning behind it. But for some folks, who are used to looking for deeper meaning in everything, maybe this has gone a bit far?

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Overlord update

So I've beaten two bosses so far. My corruption level (how 'evil' you are) is still at 0%. Still exploring underneath Heaven's Peak, trying to figure out what's going on there. I enjoy myself the most when I've got a clear goal and I can see how I'm going to get there. When I'm just wandering about trying to figure out where I should be going or what I should be doing, I get frustrated. Also, I dislike having to constantly change which minions I'm carrying with me. Sometimes there's not a handy place to send a few of my browns back to the tower, when I need just a few more blues to pick up another tower object stuck in the water.

It's pretty much done!

Things left to be done:
1.Build and install the spare tire carrier and jerry can holder.
2.Fix a leak on the heater.

Things that would prevent them taking the CJ-3B on their trip next weed:
1.Nothing!

Mom and dad took the 3B for a drive last night, and although the heater leak got mom a bit wet (dad'll just bypass the heater for now, they wont' need it), everything else ran great! I'm super proud of my dad, this jeep is absolutely beautiful, and it's running great to boot. Looking forward to the pictures from their trip.

Monday, July 23, 2007

The Jeep

So this weekend, Janie and I packed up and set off for my parents place. I visit more rarely than I should, mainly I think due to the fact that, as J and I don't have grandkids to present, we're less welcome there (I kid, I kid!). The goal of the weekend though was for me to help my dad with the CJ-3B. The fuel gauge had apparently driven dad to distraction throughout the previous week, but with a lot of help, it was installed and working correctly by Sunday night. Fuel is flowing to the engine, but not quite making it past the carburetor at the moment. Hopefully dad will be able to get that figured out soonish. He and mom were hoping to take this Jeep on a vacation next week, but unless it comes together rather quickly, they'll be taking their 1946 CJ-2A instead.

Oh, and the 3B is beautiful. Much darker than the pictures I've posted previously.

UPDATE: Dad just called, with the engine running in the background! I hope he gets it done in time to take it! There's still a long way to go though.

The final Harry Potter book.

Finished at 4:30 AM last night, less than 48 hours after I had received it. Had I nothing else to do, I'm sure I would have finished sooner, but as I'll soon relate, Janie and I were rather busy this weekend. I will say nothing about the book's contents, until everyone's had the book sufficiently spoiled by others.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Chore Wars

Inspired by this Penny Arcade comic, I've looked into Chore Wars, and since I'm a big dork, have started a party. RPG gamers are used to performing less than fun tasks for small rewards of virtual treasure and experience. Well, Chore Wars lets you gain virtual experience and items for completing real world less than fun tasks! It's a win win, satisfy the craving of the insane gamer in your household, and get a clean house out of the deal. Of course, as Tycho demonstarted in the comic linked above, the system can be taken advantage of.

BTW, if you are a brave soul who wishes to do battle against the forces of stanky, join the party of the the Collins Clean Crew, and bring light to the darkness, one dirty dish at a time!

Happy Anniversary Janie!


Well, we've made it eight years, as of today. So far so good. We think we can make it another 50. But look out for a messy divorce in 2057. Love you Janie!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Overlord

So I saw a demo of this at Jer's house, and it had promise. The premise of the game is that you, as a recently resurrected evil Overlord, must use your minions to bend the populace of the surrounding territory to your will, while at the same time, slaying the heroes who saw to your predecessor's demise. And although the game plays up the joys of being evil, the developers clearly left an out for those of us secretly wishing to convert our Overlords into Paladins. So far, the people of Spree (the nearby human town) think I'm just fantastic. I'm just starting on the mysteriously sacked Castle Spree section of the game, so it looks like I've got a long way to go, but so far I'm having a close approximation of fun.

Learning Japanese update

Despite the assurances that Japanese children find this to be ridiculously easy and uniformly find me to be an idiot, I continue to struggle to learn the hiragana characters. I can usually reproduce something that might pass for the five vowel characters, but as soon as you add in anything beyond those, your guess is likely better than mine. Batty and Sonoko are going to be visiting in August/September. Let it hereby be stated (I like to fail publicly) that I will try to have the rest of the hiragana memorized before they arrive. You know, in case they've forgotten how to speak English or something. Of course, this still won't help, as I don't know any Japanese vocabulary to use with my (supposedly) new found mastery of kana. *sigh*

Friday, July 13, 2007

The '59 3B


Words cannot express how excited I am. I just got this picture taken by someone's camera phone while I was in a meeting at work this morning. Looks like dad's almost done with the 1959 CJ-3B he's been working on. It's gorgeous!

UPDATE: Talked with dad, and it's very nearly complete. Wiring harness needs to be installed, some of the instrumentation needs to be finished, and the soft top needs to be added. Other than that, he's going to fabricate a new back bumper to match his custom front bumper, and build a spare tire mount for the back. He'll be taking this to a Jeep meet in southern Colorado this summer, but it's mine any time I want to borrow it. Once he gets done with his next project jeep, the 3B will actually get to come live at my place too! Thanks dad!!

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Note to self.

When searching listings of dogs for cocker spaniels, one should type the full search term, even if Firefox finds what you're looking for when you've only typed 'cock'. Other people will wonder what you've been doing.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Trying to catch my breath.

And so the crazy busy summer continues. After having both Janie's folks and the Ferbers staying with us a week ago, this last weekend we drove down to visit J's folks with a trunk full of home office gear. Ended up buying Janie's dad a new PC, and we set up a small NAS to backup their business data.

This weekend is our friend Stephanie's birthday, so we'll be in town to attend those festivities. Then it's off to Yuma to visit my family and see my nearly completed Jeep. And then finally, the last week in July will be back home to celebrate Celeste's 30th.

Oh! And in late August, Batty and Sonoko will be visiting! They'll spend most of their time in Sterling (Batty does more IT stuff for his family than I do for mine), but we're hoping to get some time with them before they have to head back. We've missed those guys like whoa.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Another long gap between updates...

Hey everyone. Hope all's well. Last post, we were going camping with my folks. Well, that went off well, got to see all my sisters and their kids. Good times were had by most (Janie's not a fan of the outdoors sometimes, especially when she's allergic to pine pollen).

Following the camping, we had another busy week at work, and then this last weekend, or the great conjunction, as I'll call it. Early this year, Janie and I bought tickets for ourselves and for Janie's parents and sister to go see Corteo, the Cirque du Soleil show that was doing the rounds. The only date we could get decent seats was June 30th, so I snapped them up, and pretty much forgot about it for months.

In the mean time, my friends Aaron and Celeste bought a house back in our town, and started the move back here. Due to the closing times they were able to get, their move was scheduled for the next to the last week in June. Since they'd be all moved in by the end of the month, they decided to throw a housewarming/4th of July party the last weekend in June.

So the party plans go forward, and folks come up from New Mexico to play with everyone. We agree to host the Ferbers, some of our best friends, who were driving all the way up from Santa Fe. Our plans for Cirque by now are long forgotten...

By the time we finally realized that we had conflicting plans, it was far too late to do anything about it. So we had our friends staying with us, Janie's parents and sister, and we had to miss the party in order to attend the circus. It was fun seeing everyone, but I was really bummed missing out.

Have you read my blog?