Published August 21st, 2006
in General.
We went rafting down the (redacted) River last weekend. It was mostly calm with occasional patches of this…

(Our guide Orion was having fun at least.)
Also, I found a tiny nugget (about 1g) of gold—worth about $25. B-) So of course I’m not tellin’ ya which river!
Update: It was only 0.21g (about $5). Whaa!
Published August 6th, 2006
in General.
We spent an exhausting afternoon looking at new beds today. We learned the following.
- All beds are more comfortable than our current one.
- A decent mattress costs $1000 to $14000.
- All mattresses are pretty much the same.
Published August 2nd, 2006
in General.
Some of you know that my wife bought me the best Christmas present any guy could ever get. A pair of first-class aircraft seats! First they sat at my parents-in-law’s house for a few weeks while we found time to borrow their truck and go and get them. Then they sat in our garage for a few months while I cleaned them and found out how the electrics work. Then a few more weeks while I worked out how to get them upstairs to the media room.

I settled on an electric winch strapped to the ceiling beam, and a friend to help with the final heave. Of course, the girls helped too.
Published June 25th, 2006
in General.
For those of you who’ve known me for a while, this may come as a shock.

Yes, the bookcase is installed!
Published May 30th, 2006
in General.
We spent the weekend with friends in the Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Forest. I brought a plastic magnifying lens and we melted a penny. The quarter, as you can see, didn’t quite melt (nickel versus zinc) so I think I need a more rigid frame.

[For legal reasons, none of this was done with the intent of fraud.]
Published May 21st, 2006
in General.
We went to the chocolate festival in Oakdale yesterday. For reasons unknown I spent most of today sleeping.

Published May 15th, 2006
in General.
We (my new family) were at the park celebrating Mothers’ Day. This is the day when the guys sit around and wait for the women to serve up food. About the time we started eating, we saw at a group near us that there was a small propane cylinder in a ball of flame. This event was so fascinating that people gathered around and watched until a ranger politely suggested they should back away. I was so intrigued that I quite forgot to take a photo of it with my new (unlocked) camera phone.

Eventually the fire department came and unscrewed it.
Published April 14th, 2006
in General.
It’s been raining so much, that my commute now looks like this.

Link of the week: foshata!
Published April 5th, 2006
in General.
I was tossing and turning in bed so, to help me wind down, I wrote letters to the companies that I haven’t got rebate checks from yet. I asked them for a written statement that my rebates were invalid, with specific dates and stores listed. It’ll be interesting to see if anything happens. (I also gave them the option of sending me the check, just in case that was easier for them.)
It’s been raining a lot. I find that even living in a fairly dry region, I don’t miss the rain that much. Should make for a good fire season in the fall.
Published March 2nd, 2006
in General.
Turns out that I had a lot of very uninteresting quarters (Delaware mostly) in my interesting quarter collection. They’re now joining Sara’s collection which gets CoinStared fairly regularly.
