Hoodies: the secret to happiness?

Somehow I've been able to avoid owning a hoodie. Maybe that's common. Maybe only 10% of the population owns a hoodie, but I guarantee you that it's the happy minority that own them.

We recently got an old treadmill from my parents and put it in our garage next to a work out bench of my brother's. Now that I write it down, it's like a gym on loan from my family. I realized a few weeks ago (when only the weights and bench were there) that it was stinking cold outside, and that I don't particularly enjoy being cold. So, I set out to find some warm athletic clothes, since my only athletic clothes are shorts and t-shirts.

I went to Wal-mart, Target, and Academy but I couldn't find a decent sweatshirt. I really just wanted a plain one, and maybe a plain pair of jogging pants (Stretchy pants! Old age, here I come). I couldn't find anything though. So, I ended up going to the adidas outlet at the Boardwalk in Bossier and found jogging pants and two hoodies for $20 apiece (Note: go to the outlet, buy the hoodies if you're close-by).

That night, I tried out the hoodie for the first time and it was like slipping into bed. You know, while the covers are still all cold at the bottom and you're just starting to warm up.... that level of comfort. The next night, I brought it back out as soon as I got home, and kept it on for that night's treadmill session. Excellent again. So, here I am in my third night of hoodie-dom and I'm loving it.

I really didn't think that such a simple thing as a hoodie could make such a difference in comfort. After all, it's just a sweatshirt with a single pocket on the front for your hands (GENIUS) and a hood (ok, I guess). However, when you combine them all you have one of the most comfortable devices ever put on this body.

I suppose that's the first time I've ever praised a piece of clothing so highly, and maybe the first time that you've read several paragraphs about hoodies - and now the last time you'll ever be willing to. However, it's a great idea. Worthy of a budweiser, real men of genius song at least.

Katie hates 'em, but I like them

I really like what Toyota has done with the new FJ Cruiser... and I suppose that means they've done their job in making an SUV that appeals to the younger demographic (mouseover).

This may be one of the models that people either love or hate, and it definitely seems to be that way with the wife and I. I've grown to really lilke them, but the wife can't stand them... which may be all the more reason to get one later. I have to admit, that it's a unique style... and fairly inexpensive at ~ $23000 new (compared to most other SUV's).

My birthday's coming up in march. You know what to get me now...

McDonalds Trip Planner

McDonalds - those generous souls - have been gracious enough to provide us with an online trip planner. No, I'm not kidding. On their website, they have a trip planner where you enter a trip's origin and destination, and they will plot the McDonalds along the way, just in case you need to clog your arteries on your next road trip.

From their site:

Going on a vacation?
The McDonald's Trip Planner can help you locate all the McDonald's along the way.

No thanks, I think I'll just stay home and punch myself in the face.

A cure for cancer

Normally, a story concerning big pharmaceutical companies keeping a lid on some cancer killing wonder drug would appeal directly to my inner conspiracy theorist. Now that it's been swirling around the 'net for a few days, I'm seeing some articles pointing out the ridiculousness of the response of some bloggers to this article. I have to agree with them.

Here's how the whole thing has played out so far

1. The original article is something like the following:

   New drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), did great in tests on mice, killing cancerous cells, but leaving healthy cells. Pharma companies unlikely to pay for human testing (next step in finding potential of the drug) because the drug isn't patented.



2. The blogging world interprets:

   BIG PHARMA KEEPS CANCER CURE QUIET! OMG!! PHARMA IS TEH SUXORS!!!



3. Latest, logical responses:

   1) Cancer is not a single disease 2) Plenty of drugs that show promise in mice fail in human testing 3) Kill some cancerous cells, strong cells continue and multiple (like natural selection/evolution only smaller. Final Point - If it works, pharma companies will find a way to make money off of it. Change it a little, patent and sell.

Dinner Station - Shreveport: Update

Last night we had the mexican casserole, and it was great. We did all the prep work at the dinner station, seasoned ground beef (pre-cooked for us), picante sauce, cream, beans, corn tortillas and cheese... put into an aluminum container and refrigerated.

Last night we got hungry, popped the aluminum container into the oven, and 35 minutes later we were eating some pretty darn tasty food. Even though the food was a half-size order, we were able to both eat a full plate last night, and another plate apiece tonight.

Tomorrow night, we'll be having King Ranch Chicken. I think I'm gonna like this Dinner Station arrangement.

Have you seen my owner?

Yesterday, on the way back to our house from picking up my parents Treadmill, Taylor spotted a dog running along the side of the road. He stopped, took a look at the dog's collar, and called the number listed there - no answer. So, he called me (we drove seperately, since he had the truck with the treadmill in it) and asked if we had a place for a dog.

A place for a dog!? We have a place for a stinkin' dog alright, anywhere in this house it wants to be! Katie and I both love dogs, and couldn't stand to see the dog out wandering around in the rain, especially since according to the tags the dog was about 40 miles from home. So, we took the pup in and I called the owner and left a message on their machine.

She stayed curled up on a blanket for most of the day, while we waited to hear back from her owner. She was calm, well-behaved, and cute... and because of that, Katie got attached to her in the short time she was here. We called her owner again last night and he made a trip at about 9:30 to come get her. Apparently, he'd been out hunting this morning, and said that she ran off almost as soon as they started... she's lost her will to hunt, I guess.

Dinner Station - Shreveport

This afternoon Katie and I took a trip over to The Dinner Station in Shreveport, along with my Mom and Brother.

For those unfamiliar with the name, it's a do-it-yourself food preparation business where customers can prepare their own meals, which are ready for cooking whenever they choose. The Dinner station provides the recipes, cooking instructions, the hardware, and the ingredients necessary for preparing meals - you just show up, put the food in tin foil, freezable containers or freezer bags and mix the ingredients according to the instructions. When you're ready to serve the meal to the family later, you get it out of the freezer follow the included directions and you've got yourself a hassle free meal.

Since Katie and I have been married, we've been cycling through the same menu of foods - meatball subs, chicken pot pie, enchirito's, etc. As quick, easy, and tasty as our meals have been, we've been getting tired of the same food, and have also found that we buy a large amount of food, intended to cook it at some point, that ends up getting wasted.

So, when we heard about the Dinner Station, it seemed like a good idea. We made an appointment for 12:15PM today, selected which meals from the current menu we'd like to prepare, and paid over the internet in advance. When we showed up today, our meal selections were printed out and we simply moved from meal station to meal station following directions. All the ingredients were pre-sliced and diced, so all we had to do was combine ingredients, put them into baggies or foil tins for refigerating or freezing, slap an instruction sticker onto the container and presto - the meal is ready to cook later this week.

We ordered 8 half-size meals (serves 3), which cost us $90.00 - not a bad price consider what we would've spent trying to put together our menu for the next two weeks. If my math can be trusted (and it can, as long as Calculus is not involved) that's about $4 per person per meal (with 3 people). For Katie and I it will be about $5.50 per person per meal since we're the only two likely to eat those 8 meals. Still a good deal, since we're saving much time in preparation - not to mention that the food is much healthier than the alternatives we've resorted to regularly to avoid cooking on stressful days.

Anyway, the experience overall was great. We think we got a great value from the food, and we had fun putting all the food together. The only thing left to do is cook our first meal and see how it tastes - ultimately, the most important part. If the meals are as tasty as they looked today, we'll have found a new way of preparing meals. I'll keep you posted (pardon the pun... and now, consonance).

Chuck Norris is comedy gold

Who would've thought that while Chuck Norris was creating his image, through various movies and his cheese-fest TV show, Walker Texas Ranger, that he - or his persona, at least - would later prove to be comedy gold (in my mind).

Hardly anything amuses me quite as much as the chuck norris facts that keep cropping up on the internet. The latest and greatest of which is "God said , 'Let there be light!' chuck norris said, 'Say please.'" Here's Chuck reading a list of Chuck Norris facts.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the Walker Texas Ranger Lever on the Conan O'Brien show. I think that it was the greatest recurring theme, just after "Celebrity Secrets".

All systems are go...

All systems are go for shiny, new laptop goodness.

Just minutes ago, Katie and I were discussing my computing needs. Normally, this is the conversation where I lay out my needs- 20" LCD, quad-core processor machine, laptop, home theater PC - and Katie stomps all over them. I told her I thought that after she got a job, the time would be right to buy a laptop. Instead of the usual physical violence Katie imposes on me after such statements, a beam of golden light broke through our ceiling, directly from heaven onto Katie.

She said "Yes, I think that'd be ok." A yes!? - a word that, when discussing gadgets and computers, has crossed Katie's lips as often as bacon would a Rabbi's. A word so surprising, my face actually twitched. In fact, I think my right eyebrow passed out.

So, the hunt is on. I've already got my eye on a few brands, and have decided on the basic components.

It will have the following features:

• Dual Core Processor (Core 2 Duo or Turion X2)


• Dedicated Graphics Card - at least 128 MB (Dell recommends 256MB, you know...)


• 15" screen


• 1 GB of memory (hopefully, upgraded to 2 at some point)

A whole world of mobile computing is nigh!

My schooling continues

It took a good bit of trial and error to get the web design to look right before I decided to post it for the first time a few days ago. Tonight, I intended to sit down and take another look at the site design, and try to iron out any obvious bugs or strange behavior. I also intended to improve some of the other pages, such as the archive pages and the search page.

After looking around, I found that the site didn't adjust well to resizing and there were problems when having to scroll. So, I took a little time to learn what I'd done wrong and tinkered until I was able to fix them - admittedly, this is normally something I would have done before pushing the design out to the site, but I really was sick of looking at the old site.

So, now the header and blog content should size properly, and should center itself according to the resolution of the monitor being used. I also updated the monthly archive page to have the new header, and fixed some spacing issues there. I've only got a few more pages to update, and then will have to go back and actually make the links in the header work... and my site will be fully functional.

One of my favorite songs... live

Here's a video I found on Youtube of Stevie Ray Vaughan performing Texas Flood.

This video is a submission of evidence, further proving my theory that the more you like you're in pain while playing a song, the better your guitar playing will be.

Custom Made Guitar Hero Songs

If you've ever played Guitar Hero (or Guitar Hero 2), you, like me, have wished that you could insert your favorite song into guitar hero and unleash your true guitar hero status.

Here's a forum post explaining the process of creating your own guitar hero tracks... Go ahead and be prepared for disappointment if you don't have some method of modding, or otherwise running game backups on your PS2.

Check out the following movie... demonstrating the results. This particular video is Tool - stinkfist.

Irresistable...

Try this out the next time you have pancakes, when eating with other people. When applying syrup to your pancakes, apply a slightly larger amount of syrup to your pancakes than you normally would. I'm not talking about drowning your pancakes, but a larger than normal amount... You may be surprised by the results.

Apparently, there's something special about a pancake with a lot of syrup that makes other people at the table unable to resist making comments. Comments such as, "You think you used enough syrup?", or "Would you like a little pancake with that syrup?" will surely follow. Rational people, who normally tend to avoid passing judgment suddenly wrinkle their collective noses at the lake of syrup on those pancakes. It's a strange phenomenon.

I know several people who use a large amount of syrup, so it's not that it's completely out of the ordinary... or at least not so out of the ordinary that you'd draw comments from as many people as have commented to me. It almost seems to anger people. Anywho, try it out and see if you get comments... syrup elitists are everywhere.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster in 2007

There's been a pretty nasty battle for customers being waged between Blockbuster.com, the old standby rental store, and Netflix, the online DVD rental site. As they get more ruthless with each other, undercutting each other's pricing and introducing new features, I (and consumers in general) end up being the real winners in this situation. We're experiencing the benefits of free market competition.

If you're unsure of what services Blockbuster.com offers versus Netflix, or how the Netflix service works, get yourself up to speed.

In November, after two years of competing with Netflix almost solely on price, Blockbuster.com introduced their Total Access Plan. This plan allowed customers of the Blockbuster.com DVD rental service to return DVD's rented online, and delivered by mail to be returned directly to any Blockbuster.com location. Upon return, each DVD would count for a free in-store rental, which could be used immediately... something Netflix could never offer.

This month, Netflix introduced a limited test of their "Watch Now" to some existing customers, where users can download (actually, stream) videos directly to their computers over the internet. Customers will get an hour of video for each dollar they spend on their subscription plans. So, Netflix's $17.99/month rental plan will allow for about 18 hours of downloaded video.

So, in the latest portion of the battle between Blockbuster.com and Netflix, Blockbuster.com still has the upper hand. However, I don't think the advantage will last longer than a year or two. Ultimately, I think the whole entertainment industry is headed toward providing on-demand content, streamed over the internet to home media center PC's or set-top boxes (via satellite, cable, fiber, etc.). As long as Blockbuster.com is not getting involved in this trend their extended future looks bleak.

While the on-demand, a la carte trend will lead to the end of patience in our children, it makes me happy. Consumers are finally starting to get what they want.

Web 3.0, it ain't

The new site design - or should I say page design - went up on the site tonight... in a fright... out for a bite. Sorry, didn't want to stop the rhyming. I'll probably be tweaking it for a little while, and eventually adding other pages, such as archives and individual posts. They're pretty nasty right now since I've changes things up a bit.

I kind of regret that I posted notice that I was planning to do a redesign... and actually said it looked sort of web 2.0. It's more colorful, and somewhat of a cleaner (yes, cleaner) design. However, I'm not gonna win any design awards. It doesn't really look all that web 2.0 anymore... though I think it's leaps and bounds better than the last design. It would be nice to be in college again, skipping class to play on the computer. Time was on my side back then, but now I'm not able to do that... so I'll get to the other areas of the site as I'm able.

Anywho, I've gotta fix the search button, change the color of the headers above each section in the side bar (too close to the blog post title color), and finally try to draw some of the color from the header into the posts. They're too plain for me at the moment. Oh, and I need to figure out the spacing issue with the post information at the beginning and end of each post. I ran out of steam tonight... Other than those few complaints, I'm happy with the new site design and I hope it pleases your eye balls too.

Let me know what you think if you get a chance and know how to leave me a comment.

I can feel my nose again

I can feel my nose again. Some in the South, familiar with the weather situation may think that I'm referring to the icy cold weather we've been having lately. However, I'm actually able to feel my nose because the anesthetic my dentist gave me this morning is just now wearing off.

I had my second root canal this morning, and it was a little worse than the first a few years ago. I got 4 shots of anesthetic, 2 to the gums above the tooth and 2 through the roof of the mouth. While that wasn't as pleasant as I would've liked, I realized after the dentist started drilling on the nerve in the target tooth that the anesthetic wasn't doing much.. and by realized, I of course mean, it hurt and I tried to run away. So, since that pain shot didn't work well enough, the dentist got a different kind of drug and shot me two more times with that.

After the 6th shot, we were good to go. Root canals aren't really as bad as they're cracked up to be, as long as the anesthetic does its job.

The latest of the late

In family news, my Mom celebrated a birthday last week. We all got together again today to celebrate properly, with whiskey and cartoons. Well, we did have cartoons. We ate lunch together and watched Ice Age 2... good movie.

On the home front, we recently picked up two dressers from Katie's grandma to use in our bedroom. We nearly lost the tall one due to high winds and lack of common sense (we didn't tie them down when transporting them in the truck bed). On I-49 I noticed that the tall dresser was a little wobbly, to which Katie said "stop being such a girl". It wobbled again. Then the dresser tried to make a break for it. Luckily my lightning quick reflexes were such that I could slam on the brakes and pull off the interstate before it managed to make it completely out. We managed to wedge some drawers (*snickers*...no, seriously, the wood kind) between the two dressers and the side of the truck bed and transport it with minimal wiggling thereafter.

Lastly, in news related to this site, I'm redesigning the blog. I've worked something up in photoshop, and while it looks somewhat web 2.0 (hello, cliche, good to see you), I think it's still representative of my personality. I was bored with the old design, and after a few attempts at making a redesign happen I wanted to give it another try. Something fresher, and cleaner is/was in order.

See you tomorrow, Chase

I logged on to my bank's website to check out our money situation a little bit ago and noticed that our checking account seemed low, and not 'Katie went shoe shopping low'. I'm talking 'where did that $1000 go?' low. I checked out our activity and found that earlier today somewhere in California, I had apparently used my debit card for $807 worth of something. I have no idea what was bought, and won't be able to find out any more exact details until tomorrow, but I sure would like to find the sneaky bugger that's responsible for this.

I would take a trip to Stockton, CA right now and follow them around for a day or so, then put a baseball bat to everything they had of value. Car, dented and smashed. Home, breezy and brightened. Cat, tenderized. Ruthlessness would help ease my mind.

I digress... Katie called the 800 number for Chase and found that this person tried to drain our account, but was prevented from doing so after the bank froze the account due to suspicious activity.

I know I said it already, but I really want to find the person who did this... Credit card fraud should be punishable by public beatings, as should pedophilia and animal cruelty. Well, that's all the cheer I have for one night.

http://www.whattheduck.net/

I found a great comic strip this morning, while enjoying my first free weekend in years. It's centered around a duck that is also a professional photographer.

They never get old.

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.

I'm sorry Nintendo, but Wii need time apart.

I'm a Nintendo fanboy, what can I say? I'm not apologetic. I'm not ashamed. They've been good to me, and until shortly before Christmas I'd been good to them too...when I went and sold my wii.

I think I've had every Nintendo system at some point, with the exception of the Virtual boy. Who am I to make an exception for the Wii? I thought it would be just as great as all the others. As a matter of fact, I thought it would be revolutionary. I pictured myself waving a controller around in lightsaber fashion, playing baseball, bowling, boxing, and having the time of my life. After playing several games on the system though, I was left underwhelmed. I think it has possibilities, but right now it's more novelty than good gaming system to me.

The games that were ported (designed for all game systems and just adapted to the wii), like Need For Speed Carbon were downright awkward to play using the "wiimote" as a steering wheel. I could steer much more effectively with the old analog joystick and use the wiimote as an accelerator, tilting down to accelerate and tilting back up to slow down. The accelerator was a neat trick, but nothing more. I just wanted to mash buttons again... and have all of them close within reach of the accelerator button. It was nothing I wouldn't be able to adapt to, but why would I want to? This old dog doesn't want to learn new tricks for just one system.

I digressed a little bit there on my need for speed rant... I can't fault Nintendo for that one. The truth is that I bet Nintendo, in their own games, will make more effective use of the wiimote and its various attachments, much like they did with Zelda. Zelda was good, innovative, and fun while it lasted, I just couldn't will myself to give it the time though.

So, when it came down to it, I couldn't justify spending $350 (2 games, system and one controller - yes, only one. Another is $60), and then $5-$10 for games I paid $40 for 10 years ago. I made the decision to sacrifice the wii for the gameTaylor found a buyer who had some eager kids and I sold it without loss.

I imagine that once mario comes out I'll buy the wii again. I'm a sucker for games with plumbers. Until then, though, the money goes back into swiss video game bank account rotation (The swiss are notoriously neutral to marital disputes over video game expenses). Until then, wii. Until then...