Category Archives: general

Just regular kinds of stuff that happened (that doesn’t fit in other categories).

Please Don’t Ride Your Bicycle on the Train Tracks

So my friend who was in the Train Crash last year tends to have more problems on the train than most people I know. Delays at the start of the trip and at the end so we tease him about it. Today I called him after he left for his parents and the train left about 20 minutes late, no crisis. But, he calls me about an hour later, they’re stopped west of Ann Arbor and they hit someone on the tracks. He didn’t have much in the way of details.

So I just called him for a status and it turns out it was a guy on a bicycle (I’m assuming on the tracks); I guess the conductor said he saw him before they hit him (I’m surprised they gave them that much info). The train was stopped for a while (I’m guess less than 2 hours) while things were checked out; he could see flashlights and cameras going off. The odd thing is they never found the guy, but they found the bicycle.

Update – This mLive Ann Arbor Article says no one was hurt and contradicts a bit of what my friend says that he heard the conductor say. It’s the only article I can find and it was from early last night, so I have no other way to verify info. (This is the right link, their whole site just seems to be having problems right now)

What a Wonderful World

Wow! I never could really do shadow puppets myself…

Amazingly well done! You will be impressed.

The Final Issue of Stuff Magazine

So I got the last issue of Stuff Magazine, no big loss, it was just a gadget/girls/media magazine (and it was free). It was marked “final issue” and “collectors item” so it wasn’t a surprise or anything that it was the last issue (and a lot of the similar magazines have been dying lately).

The weird thing was (wait for it…) there were still subscription cards inside the magazine! What are they going to do charge me and then send me a substitute?

A Plethora of Things.

So I normally don’t put too many topics per post, actually I generally only put one topic per post. But I’ve been sick and all my little post-its on things to blog about are getting too long. So I’ll steal the Bullet Sunday idea from Dave for this week.

  • Sick – I’ve been lousy with a few different things for the last few weeks, I’ve been so fuzzy I pretty much need to wear my reading glasses all the time it’s usually just late at night (and sometimes early mornings). I’m actually think the few different things are fighting it out in my body, or the drugs are now what’s causing a problem. I couldn’t get into the doctor on Saturday (actually she didn’t think another visit would do any good). I’ll have someone look up the drugs and see if I’m having any problems between them it’s the dry mouth and bad taste that popped up in the last 36 hours that’s making me think drug interactions.
  • WordPress – WordPress is one of the larger blogging platforms, lots of plug-ins and looks well supported. For example, on Wednesday Matt (a WP developer) is having a WordPress 2.3 upgrade party in San Francisco

    WordPress 2.3 is coming out on Monday, so come out Wednesday evening and upgrade your blog with the pros. How badly can you screw it up when the developers are right there? If you upgrade your blog before Wednesday come and help out others and make feature requests.

    I think it’s kind of a cool idea I’d go if I were in the area and I don’t even really use it. I’m hoping I can hold off to really using it until after Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s WordPress for Dummies book is published. What I don’t like about WP is that it’s all dynamic (but that’s part of what I do like about it too). The dynamic-ness is just going to slow things down; I liked that in MT you can make some pages static and some dynamic but the cool part is MT will cache the pages once it generates them until the next post so it’s semi-static. Keep in mind you break some important dynamic function, everything is probably going to break. I think my next blog experiments will be with WP….

  • Jott – Way cool I’ll post more on this soon.
  • Legion of Super Heroes – Season one was great but season two (started yesterday) has the Superman from the 41st century (actually a clone of the 21st century Superman) who has traveled back to the 31st(?) to work with Legion and (I’m assuming) the SuperBoy/Man of the 21st century. It seems like it’s going to be a little two complicated. They characters seem liked the characters have gotten a little bit older too (Duo Damsel is so cute).

  • Snakehead – A new Alex Rider novel is coming out. They’ve definitely gotten better as the books went along, I recently re-read the first one and it’s no where near as good as the later ones.
  • Twitter – Mini blog posts that you can read on-line or receive as text messages all day long. I don’t get it but then again, I didn’t get blogging at first either. But personal blogging at that level is too much, IMHO. News might be interesting, weather(?), local bands as to when they are performing (sometimes I just want to know what time they are performing). I did set up a page and grabbed a dozen people to listen too (but I don’t get paged, I actually have to go and look); if I find anything super (probably news/weather or something like that) I might have them go to my cell phone…
  • Season Premiers – I re-watched the season premiers of a few shows, I had a chance to see some early promos of some and they changed them a bit. The Big Bang Theory got edited in a few spots, I actually think it’s less funny for those scenes. Bionic Woman also got changed and I think it flows a little better, I certainly enjoyed it better. The odd part was that they switch out her sister (who lives with her) from a punky deaf girl to a regular rebellious teen; that seemed like a huge strange switch.
  • Bet you can’t watch just once…

    It’s only 4 seconds so give it a look see…

    Click here if it doesn’t play….

    My Sebring Convertible Rear Windshield was peeling from the roof

    So the roof on my 7 year old convertible was starting to peel between the back window and the roof (I purchased it about 5 years ago). This seems to be a problem with many of the Sebrings when they start to hit the sever year mark (I should have taken a before picture). I will admit I am rough on the car and drive it through the car wash which probably has more to do with it than the weather although I’m sure Michigan ice buildup has something to do with it too.

    I starting asking people who had Sebrings from the 7+ years range and most of the people I asked had replaced the whole roof since that was what was recommended to them!!! I figured, what do I have to lose if I muck it up if replacing it is the only option? After a while of googling around and asking at car places, I finally purchased some Permatex Black Super Weatherstrip Adhesive which was suggested by my oil change guys (about $5 for a tube). It’s great, I’ve survived many major storms, done a road trip or two and gotten the car washed a few times over the last month since I’ve done it and it still looks great. It could be better but that’s my fault, I’m not so good at that stuff, if I had taken better care I’m sure it would be good as knew. If it starts to peel again I’ll just squirt in some more glue, even if it gets messy it’s better than how it looks when peeling. Continue reading

    Only 1 year left…

    I’ve only got 1 year left in my 101 in 1001 list and I haven’t made much progress lately. I’ve used about 2/3 of my time but only done about 1/3 of my items.

    It really has helped me get other items done in my life, they don’t get on the list since it’s static but they are the kinds of things that would be on the list…

    (Later – Actually it’s a few days less than a year, for some reason I thought the 9th was “the day”, I guess it’s September 4th, 2008.)

    Mom’s Birthday Photos

    Momporch60ThSo I got some of the photos from Mom’s Surprise party up. This first one is from in front of the house, my cousin and uncle decorated it during the night. The rest of the photos are from the party.

    I posted about 18 and hope some of the others with cameras will send me some. I you missed the post, the surprise party was yesterday.

    These are really old school photos of my grandparents kids, my mom is in the lower-right.