New chapter.

Well, as my family knows, my job has come to an end. This is not very fun and I was nervous about being able to stay in contact with everyone, but it seems like that won't be too much of a problem. I just got a new phone (916) 601-2348 and it's very nice and shiny. It's an iPhone so it has all the Internet access things I'll need. My updates should be a bit more frequent, but they'll also be a bit shorter I think.

This is a fairly exciting new chapter in my life. I haven't liked my job for the past few years (anyone can see this by reading through some of my older posts) and I don't really know what's coming next. While talking with Rilla, I was able to realize that the whole world has been opened up to me. Perhaps I'll get a job on the east coast! Maybe I'll become a super famous racing driver in Germany (not too hopeful on that one though). All I know for certain is that I'll no longer need to put up with my old bosses. I'm looking forward to whatever comes in the future.

One last thing I need to tell you all before I finish this up and that is about my email. My old work email is obviously not being used any more so you'll have to use my new one: robsracing@gmail.com

Now that I am not working, I'll be spending a lot of time planning the wedding and I'll be sure to post small updates about that as they arise.

Good night all.

This week can't end fast enough.

Wednesday night some jack-ass broke my passenger window, grabbed my CD's, Registration & Proof of insurance, and my small folding kite. All I got to say about that is "Why?" I can understand wanting to steal someone's CD's. But my Regristration and proof of insurance?! What the hell can that DO for someone who isn't me? I really hope I can find this punk ass kid... I had like 80 CD's and at about $15 a pop, that comes to like $1,200 worth of music. That's a goddamn felony. Can you imagine it! Getting a strike on your record and losing your right to vote because you stole some CD's. I'm absolutely fuming about this. I actually feel vengeful. I don't want justice, I want revenge.

Anyway, I was also gonna write about the wedding plans today, but something happened there that made my blood boil too, and before I write something that I regret writing, I'm going to give a few more days to let myself cool off. I just want this thrice damned week to end.

Here's that video of my RC Drift car goin' 'round some fireworks.


Another easy quote today, but I thought it was apt.

"Y'know, it woulda' been worth him keyin' my car if I coula' caught him doin' it."

(Sorry... I'm not sure if that is the direct quote... it might be a little off. It's been a while since I've seen this movie.)

Some Stuff.

Rilla really wanted to see the pictures of my new Drift Shell. I posted them on Face Book, but I can't tell if she's seen them or not, and I'm certain that Dad hasn't, so I'm also going to place them here. Check it out.

These are the concept sketches that I used to see what I wanted to do.





These are the final product of all my labors.




Here are some pictures of the lights in action.



It was a monumental undertaking for me. I spent around 10 hours on the buckets to hold the lights alone, and another 4 hours learning how to wire them up properly. I think that I spent about 35 hours in total getting this project complete. It looked good on TV though. One of the people that was on camera with us TIVOed the segment and burned it to DVD. Once I get a hold of that DVD I'll be sure to upload the video and show everyone. It wasn't as much air time as we had hoped, only one 4 minute segment (we were told that there would be 3 or 4 4 minute segments) but there was some breaking news of some sort... no idea what it was though... probably budget crap (a little off topic, but I'm not going to vote for a single incumbent the next time 'round). It was fun none-the-less.

I'll hit y'all up later with video and other stories.

Very easy quote today, but I saw it recently and it made me laugh.

"There is no doubt that our attractions will drive children out of their minds."
"What are those?"
"Small versions of adults, honey."

More work Drama.

My last post I said that my job seemed all sorts of secure because there's no one else to do the work I do, but it seems like that security isn't quite as solid as I thought. First of all, let me state that I haven't lost my job, nor have I been told that they'll be letting me go any time soon. That being said however, I'm still kinda nervous. My bosses have had a falling out. At the beginning of the month Joel dissolved Accurate Fire Protection. We're finishing up a few jobs over the next 3-4 weeks, then that's all for Accurate Fire. Tom has started up another company that he is going to run with a new partner that has more than 25 years experience in this business with the name "Shelter Fire Protection." If all goes well with Financing to get enough capital to finish the start up of Shelter Fire, then I'll just transfer over to that company. With any luck I won't miss so much as a day of work. Just... kinda keep me in your thoughts... I'd appreciate it.

Outside of that, I've been keeping myself busy with my RC Drift Hobby, and wedding plans. I'm at the office today painting another body shell for my drift car because I'm going to be on TV this Thursday. Good Day Sacramento on ch. 31 has invited us to be on their program. That should be fun. Since the MG shell I have isn't a Japanese Import (I'm not a fan of the Japanese Import/Tuning scene), Jeremy suggested I get one for the TV spot because the Drifting Scene is very much about the Japanese Imports. I followed the letter of the law in this regard, but not the spirit. I bought myself a Honda S2000 shell which is obviously a clone of the classic British Sports car; Two seat, rear drive, convertible sports car. I hope it will look OK, but I think I may have reached beyond my abilities again. I'm putting some pretty intricate hand painting on it, and I'm putting Lights on it. I had to teach myself how to wire up LED's... it's not too hard, but it is time consuming. I also had to custom build some light buckets for the LED's to go into. In all, there's going to be 10 LED's all powered by one 9V battery for this car. Two white lights in each head light, two red lights in each tail light, and one red light in each of the exhaust tips to make them look like they're glowing red hot. I hope it'll look alright... once I'm done with it (probably tomorrow or Monday) I'll take some photos and post them for you.

Oh, if any of you are concerned that my possible lack of employment will delay my wedding again (therefor making you rethink booking a flight) don't worry, we're still going to get hitched if I lose my job. The reason why it was postponed last time when Rebecca lost her job was because she wasn't living with me at the time and I couldn't support the both of us. But we live together now, and if I lost my job, we'd still live together, we're still going to get married. The wedding plans are moving along smoothly. I'll be sure to write more about that next post.

Take it easy everyone.

Mark must be super busy, because he didn't guess on the last quote and it's from his favorite movie American Beauty.

New Quote:
"That's a big Twinkie"

I've been busy too.

Looks like my *edit* two *edit* siblings have been as super busy as I have.

I've been busy because recently my job has been secured. In these hard times, our company has had to lay off more than half of our field workers, and because there haven't been many new jobs coming in for design, our other two designers and our receptionist have all been laid off too. That means our company is back to the way we were about three years ago. It's just our office manager, Tom, Joel, and me now (our superintendent hasn't been laid off, but he was moved back into field work rather than office work). I've been super busy completing the last few loose ends of my ex-coworkers projects for the past two weeks or so along with the few jobs that have come up. I think I'll have a lot less stress moving forward from now because all of those loose ends have been neatly tied together, but it's still awfully lonely here in the office. It's still a bit of a relief because we all knew that layoffs were coming, but we didn't know who was on the chopping block and now I know so long as the company survives, I've got income. It just sucks that I've had to put in all sorts of Own Time to get everything done.

On a more positive note, as unimportant as it is, I finally figured out how to make my TV play my XBox 360 in HD. It's great to finally be able to read the text on the screen. I'm also still doing my drifting thing just about every other weekend. Here is some video from a chase car from the last big meet up at William land park.

I think I'm getting a lot better. I still haven't gotten bored with it. There's another meet this weekend that I'll be attending in a parking garage. It's a new location for me with an unfamiliar surface, but hopefully I'll still have some awesome skillz on it.

This Saturday, Mike and I are going to be hitting the lake by my apartment. I finally have his boat working 100% and now we just need to test it out on the water. I'll see what I can do to perhaps get some video of it so you can see how that goes too. I'm really getting into this whole RC thing. I wouldn't bet against it that I may get into RC flying before too long... perhaps that will be a better midlife crisis than a motorcycle.

Thanks for being patient with my lack of updates guys.

Quote Time:
"I think 'lagoon' and I think waterfall, I think tropical. This is a cement... hole."

I mean it! Hobbies are fun!

So my last post was about my RC Boat, this post is about my RC Drift Car. I got into this pretty much the same time as the boats. I have a neighbor, Jeremy, that had one, and after playing with it for a bit I decided I had to get one too. One Graig's List later and I had a fairly decent drift car for super cheap. It's a slightly older electric touring car called the Losi XXX-S and it's got a belt driven four wheel drive system which is wonderful for drifting.

Jeremy helped me out a great deal with set up, which was a lot more extensive than I thought it would be, and now it runs extremely well. So far we've locked the rear differential, tightened up the front, gave it a little bit of overdrive to the rear wheels, changed out the shock springs, and changed out the regular plugs on the batteries to a plug with lower resistance to help keep heat down. There's still a whole lot I want to do to it, but the changes we did were the only cheap ones, the rest are triple digit cost and I'm not ready to spend that kind of dough.

Jeremy is also one of the creators of a Sacramento based drifting club and I joined up with them. Every week or so we meet up for practices and such. Last weekend however, there was a fairly large meet with a tournament and everything! I was able to find out just how well set up my car was. See?


Woot 2nd place. Got a trophy an' everythin'!

This group of guys are really awesome. If you remember I tried to get into buggy racing, but the people in that hobby were very competitive and unhelpful. They all felt that their set ups were trade secrets and they didn't want to give their competitors any advantage at all. This drift club is the complete opposite of the buggy club. Everyone is there to help everyone else. Here's a perfect example; I was doing a tandem run (which is when two people are competing against each other at the same time) with one guy, and on our second run his car broke down. Rather than just let him have to forfeit, I helped him out. The belt drive on his car had frayed a servo wire and I took the time and soldered it together for him, then put on a zip tie to make sure that those wires wouldn't rub against the belt again. After that was done, we finished our run and luckily I still won that match up. That wasn't the only example of that day either! These guys are wonderfully laid back just out to have a fun time.

Here are some more pictures of my Car and my Trophy. There's also a short clip of my car drifting around a part of the track.

Hobbies are fun!

So my friend Mike has a friend and co-worker named Jim who bought three remote controlled boats from an estate sale for $75. All of them had been neglected for some time and none of them ran. Since Mike knew that I had that RC Buggy, he figured I knew more about this stuff than he did. I was given the offer that if I could get them up and running, or at least could show them what they needed to get them up and running, I could keep one. Well, I got the first boat a couple of weeks ago, and after a dozen or so hours of research and elbow grease, I got it working! Boy, am I glad I live on a small lake (it's more like a large pond).

Check out these pictures! It was super fun.

As you can see, it's kind of an old boat. Nonetheless, it's still a very good boat.


It's an older style K&B outboard 7.5 cc two stroke nitro motor. I found out that they don't make any more. I did find a website that still makes newer models of this motor, and therefore can get some parts for it, but they're all sorts of expensive. Here's to hoping that I don't break it.


This is me just cruising kind of slowly. I never had a real chance to open her up on the water because it kept stalling out on me. I have to learn the proper settings for the carb a little better... then I'll be able to see how fast this sucker really is.


Even without full throttle, you can see that it can cook.


This is me giving it a little too much power as I put it in the water. I almost flipped it!



All of these pictures came from some video that Rebecca took with mom's old Sony Handicam, but as of yet, I don't know how to copy the video on the tapes to my computer. As soon as I figure that out though, I'll be sure to post it.

Small Update.

I really don't have much to post from the past couple of weeks. I've been pretty busy with work. It seems as if the less there is to do, the more things go wrong with the projects that are currently being installed. We've had trouble with the past three jobs, two of them have been fixed and are all good. The third is still in the works. I just had a huge meeting with the AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction... or the Fire Department, that's probably easier), my bosses, and the GC (General Contractor) and we still don't have 100% of the answers that we need. We'll have our answers by Thursday hopefully. Well, things will happen one way or another. My job has also moved into estimating a lot more lately. Since we have very little in the way of new design coming in (until the banks start lending, then I'll be hurting for time) I've been going out and surveying potential bids for a while. Kohl's department stores have taken full advantage of Mervin's going out of business. I've surveyed 6 ex-Mervin's in northern California that are all going to become Kohl's stores. It would be pretty stellar if we got all of these. These would be cake walk TI's (Tenant Improvements) to design and tons of work for our field guys. Each of these TI's have almost 800 sprinkler heads. It would be really good work.

Not last weekend, but the weekend before, I took my NICET (National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies) exams. I took 34 elements and if I pass 30 of them, I'll be NICET Level II Certified in Fire Sprinkler and Suppression Systems. I know, I know, it's a very specialized field, but hey, it'll be $1 an hour for each level while working here. And even if I get a job elsewhere, it wont look bad on my Resume... if anything, it'll show them that I'm willing to get it for their field too. Most of the test went really smoothly. There were one or two sections that I had problems with, and one section that I had absolutely no idea to any of the questions. That was material specifications and I didn't think it would be all that inclusive, but all of the questions were about the thickness of copper pipe and tubing. We don't ever use copper pipe or tubing. Copper is all but obsolete now because of the advances of CPVC pipe, but oh well... I'll just not take that one next time. I doubt I passed enough elements to get the Level II, but at least I'm now prepared for the next time I take it.

Outside of work related stuff, Rebecca and I have finally decided on where our wedding is going to take place. We looked at several different places, but the best place we thing will be the Lake Natoma Inn just on the outskirts of old Folsom. They've got some very reasonable rates. All we have to do now is get enough money to pay for it. Yay for brown baggin' it. We already have our photographer, and we got him for a very reasonable rate. However, the way we got him for so cheap is because all he is going to do is take the photos. He'll be giving us all the digital negatives, and Rilla has been gracious enough to agree to do our wedding album for us. She is so very talented at that kind of thing. So all that's left to us, so long as we figure out how to pay for the wedding site is the Cake, Flowers, and the person to do the actual wedding ceremony. It's a very exciting time for Rebecca and me. I think either this weekend, or possibly next, I'm going to buy all the materials for my cape, and take them down to a Tailor that can actually make it. I'm pretty friggin' stoked about that.

Well, I don't really have any other stories other than those. Except I saw the Pink Panther 2 last week. That was a pretty stellar movie. Not quite as funny as the first, but there was a scene that had me laughing without break for about 6 minutes. Heh, Steve Martin is my comic actor, even possibly my favorite actor out right. Good times.

Anyway, Thanks for reading. I'll be posting another sometime this month.

Movie Quote Time:

1) "I'm going to come back from the dead."
"And what makes you think you can do that?"
"Because I'm rich."

2) "I have to go now, as someone is staring at me through binoculars."

3) "Hello, this is Harris. I'm in right now, so you can talk to me personally. Please start talking at the sound of the beep."

4) "I've got culture coming out of my ass."

5) "You son of a motherless goat!"

6) "Who presents this woman? This woman? But she's not a woman. She's just a kid. And she's leaving us."

7) "Ladies and gentlemen, I can envision a day when the brains of brilliant men can be kept alive in the bodies of dumb people"

8) "I find a little giggle-gas before I begin increases my pleasure enormously."

9) "A twelve-gauge, double-barreled, grenade-launcher of LOVE!"

10) "Women have choices, and men have responsibilities"

Akta

I saw this on Rilla's blog, and I thought I'd try it myself.

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS, "IS THIS OKAY," YOU SAY?
Destroids in Danger

2. WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Let it Be

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Dreams be Dreams

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Adventure Today

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Bored

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Geeks in Love

7. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
The Old Dun Cow

8. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Can't by me Love

9. WHAT IS 2+2?
You're My Best Friend

10. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Ticks & Leeches

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Headtrip

12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
I've Got Some Falling to Do

13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Sugar

14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Swing a Cat

15. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Sandy Face

16. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Wasting Time

17. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Heart Too Hot to Hold

18. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Running to Stand Still

19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Take Me to Your Leader

20. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Get Back

21. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Akta


I had a couple of good ones in there, the wedding dance one made me a little nervous ;)

Whole bunches of stories.

Robs Web Log January 23, 2009

Sorry folks, it’s a long one again.

I’m combining about three blogs worth of stuff into this one because I’m a procrastinator.

It had pretty good trip to Arizona, but I completely underestimated how addicting X-Box Live is. I didn’t do anything I set out to do that week. I wanted to do a bunch of writing for that comic that I was talking about, but all I got done was the most basic of outlines. The rest of my free time (when no one was at home) was playing that damn X-Box. I thought I was bored of the racing game Forza Motorsport 2. I have easily over 300 hours logged on my own system, but all of those were done alone. When you throw other actual people, the challenge becomes much more intense. The main problem though is that Jason doesn’t play at all, so I had to play quite a bit of single player so I could buy and upgrade a handful of cars for specific races. But after that, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have found that I prefer to play in the morning because the people from Great Britain are still up and playing. It is so much more entertaining to play those people. They’re all extremely polite and they all have a high level of skill. Americans however do nothing except bitch and complain. If you go off line and nudge them they call you dirty names, and when they smash into me and I say sarcastically “thanks,” they tell me to quit bitching… then call me a homosexual racist is less than cordial vocabulary. I didn’t only play Forza though. There’s another great game that Jason has that I do not own and that is “Left 4 Dead.” That game is basically surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. You can play this game single player, but it is not designed for that. The game was made so 4 different people would play at the same time cooperatively. I didn’t think I would like it all that much because I am terrible at FPS’s (First Person Shooters), but it’s one of the few games that Jason and I could play at the same time. After playing a few rounds I was pretty well hooked on it. It’s a very simple game. It has about 45-50 seconds of fun that repeats itself over and over. Surprisingly though it doesn’t get boring. Since there are 4 people playing at the same time, we’re always watching each others backs, and when something goes wrong for one person, it can go sharply down hill for everyone else. When you get really low on health you fall to the ground and can’t walk or use your main weapon (Assault Rifle, Shotgun, or Sniper Rifle); you can only use your pistol. You have to just lay there and wait for one of your teammates to help you up. You also have to keep checking on your teammate’s health and patch them up if they need it. If even one of the team dies, the game becomes terribly hard to beat. It really pays to play together in that game.

When everyone is home however, I don’t play too many games (maybe a little with Jason). We would play with Adrina, go out to dinner, or watch movies. Shannon introduced me to a great series of movies call “The Thin Man.” They’re old black and white detective movies from the 1930’s. I’ve watched this type of movie in the past and I haven’t liked them. These however are comedy “who-dun-it” mysteries instead of dramatic movies. The main character, Nick Charles, is a perpetual drunk who makes friends with all the people he’s put in the slammer. He gets along with the rabble of the world; his wife on the other hand is very high class, but not condescending. She loves Nick and only wants to watch him do his detective thing. The dialog in these movies is very fluid and natural without the normal dramatic flare and pauses of movies from this time period. I only had the chance to watch two of them, but the second one had something interesting, Jimmy Stewart was in it, and this was before he became famous because the credits listed him as “James”. On second thought, that’s really not all that interesting, but it tickled something in my brain to remember it.

Jason and did a few other activities as well. We went to that Hockey game I spoke of in my last entry, and it was one hell of a good time even though Arizona just spanked Detroit. The final score was 6-3! The first two periods (I still have to remember that they’re not called quarters) were actually very intense. Every time Arizona scored a goal, Detroit would immediately respond with one of their own, even taking the lead at one point I believe. However, the Red Wings completely lost it in the third period. They lost another goal, then another. With only five minutes left in the period, the Coyote’s took a penalty and gave Detroit a power play. Detroit then decided to pull their goalie so they could have another man in, but Arizona got control of the puck immediately and with Detroit without their goalie, made their 6th goal. I had to endure some serious jibing from Jason for that.

The other activities we did were fun, but fairly uninteresting. We did some bowling (I won both games and almost beat my all time record with a score of 169). The night before I had to drive home, we went to a game group that Jason is a member of. That was a fun little group of people who every other week meets up and just plays different board games. Most of the games were ones that I have never heard of… European stuff mostly. Still it was a good time.

=======================================================

My trip back wasn’t as fun as the trip up. I just listened to the fourth Harry Potter book on CD the whole time. However there was one incident that rather surreal. It was during my second pit stop, when I finally hit Bakersfield. It was about 2PM, so I decided to stop in a Denny’s and have myself a burger. The Church crowd was all there, so it took a while before I was seated. After I was seated and got my food, I was enjoying my burger when out of the freaking blue this guy looks down at me and proclaims in a loud voice, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I rebuke you!” I sit there dumbfounded for a few seconds before asking simply, “Why?” Without any hesitation he says, “Because of your blasphemous shirt.” I should explain at this point that I was wearing a shirt from one of my favorite web-comics, Dr. McNinja (check it out sometime www.drmcninja.com). Everyone, I assume, knows the saying “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do), but Dr. McNinja’s role model is batman, so my shirt said “WW [batman symbol] D.” So I look down at it, then back up at him and ask, “Would you like to sit down and discuss it with me?” To my amazement he did just that! I started the conversation with, “Please don’t take this too harshly, but I don’t think you’re being very Christ-like in your behavior.”
“How do you mean?” he asks. I’m at this point getting kind of impressed by this guy. He seems like he could actually be intelligent enough to have a theological discussion with someone not of his faith without boiling down to shouting.
I answer him, “Christ always seemed to be a lot more loving and forgiving. After all he’s the one that said ‘He who is without sin, cast the first stone.”
He shot back with, “Well, it was Jesus that overturned the money lenders tables at the temple.”
I couldn’t resist being a little bit of a jack-ass at this point and said, “So, Denny’s is Holy Ground?”
“Of course not, but it still doesn’t give you the right to parade around in a shirt that says that Batman is a more important person than Jesus is,” he says to me.
“That argument would hold true if I were at your church,” I reply, “but we’re out in public, I have the right to wear what I want. Besides, you don’t even know that this is just a novelty shirt that came from a Web-Comic and that no-one on the planet should take it seriously. At this point I’m compelled to remind you, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’”
At this point, he kind of looks at me funny and changes his tone back to the one he started out with.
“I have nothing to worry about, go ahead and judge me; I’m not the one wearing a blasphemous shirt.”
I sigh a little bit because I knew at this point that the conversation was pretty much at an end and was just going to start going in circles. Nothing good ever comes of that so I start eating again and say, “I see that you’re as thick skulled as I am, you may leave.” He simply got up at that point and left. That was the third time he surprised me, I thought he’d keep at it. Anyway, he’s actually been in my thoughts for these few weeks now. I wonder if I had the same impact on him as he had on me. He didn’t change my life in any way, if anything he just showed me how comfortable I am with myself, but I wonder if I left an impression on him… like, does he have a blog where he writes about this crazy Satanist who knows the bible. My goodness I would laugh my ass off if I found that.

After that whole ordeal, I only had about four hours driving left which passed uneventfully if a bit damp. I got home, kissed Rebecca and played with my dog before passing out.

=======================================================

Here’s a completely different story that happened the weekend after I got back from Arizona about Rebecca’s ring. It all started before the Holidays. We took the rings into the Fred Meyers store where we bought them because we have to have them inspected and cleaned every 6 months or the warranty on the diamonds becomes void. Well, we took the ring there, and they said they couldn’t sign off on the ring because the prongs that hold up the main diamond were slightly bent. So we had to pay to get them fixed, the warranty for the gold had expired by this point. Anyway, we pay for the prongs, and hand them her ring for a bit. We pick the ring back up the next weekend and we saw that they had made a fairly large mistake. After they fixed the prongs, they re-dipped the ring in gold and polished the whole thing. The problem with this is that only half of the ring is supposed to be polished, the other half is supposed to have a brushed, or satin, finish. They let Rebecca keep the ring until after the Holidays when they would fix the problem at no charge. So, we take the rings back to them and since they hadn’t touched the wedding band, they asked to keep that as well to use as a template to be able to tell which areas have the satin finish, and which areas are polished. So Rebecca dropped them off and was told to pick them up the next weekend. When she picked them up, it was nightmare city. It looked like they simply took an angle grinder to it. It was rough to the touch too! You could have filed your finger nails on it. The absolute worse part of it was that they did the exact same thing to the wedding band too! My guess was that some new guy was given her engagement ring to fix, and when he botched it, he did the same thing to the wedding band and just hoped that no one would notice! So Rebecca was by herself when she picked them up and she saw it and told the lady at the counter that it was wrong. Rebecca had my wedding band still and showed the lady at the counter what it was supposed to look like. The lady at the counter made the excuse that my ring was directly from the manufacture and their jewelers couldn’t replicate it, but if Rebecca wanted to, she would have their jewelers do the same thing to my ring at no additional cost. Needless to say, Rebecca did not take her on that offer, but she really didn’t know what to do so she just came home. When she just told me what the problem was, I was just thinking that it was Rebecca over reacting again, but then I saw it and became un-glued. I honestly think I could have done the same quality of work, but then, I’m a Fire Sprinkler designer, not a jeweler. I decided to take Rebecca and the rings back to Fred Meyers the next day. Luckily, the Lady that helped Rebecca was not there. When I explained the situation to one of the other attendants, and showed her the ring, she agreed with me that it was unacceptable. They then asked me if they could keep my wedding band so they could use that as a template for the way the brushing was supposed to look. I told them that I wasn’t very keen on that idea because of they had done to Rebecca’s wedding band. To my relief they understood that and took one of their stock rings that had very similar brushing to use as a template and let me keep mine. They told us to return the next weekend. When we picked them up the next weekend it was almost perfect. The brushing looked just a little rough, but then I took a closer look at my ring and noticed that even it looked a little rough. We figured that the rings would rub smooth within a week or so, and it had. Rebecca never complains about it, and she can be a little anally retentive about such things. If it had bothered her after this, I would have taken it to a different jeweler, but she seems happy with it, so I’m going to let it lie.

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Here is yet another completely unrelated story. So, since Rebecca and I are going to be getting married this October, I’ve been looking at all my belongings and deciding what can go. I came to my Bass Guitar and amp and through that I never play it, like at all, and it could probably sell for a hundred bucks. So while at work, I was checking the price on Guitars on Craig’s List to see what I could get for it. After I found my answer, I also looked up Ferrari Memorabilia just for the hell of it. After Michael Schumacher retired in 2006, I’ve been quasi looking for some of his stuff. I don’t think anyone will be able to match his 7 world championships in my lifetime. Anyway, right after he retired I checked on the price of his signature, and it added 350 Euros to whatever the object was. Well, that put me right off, I’m not about to spend 400 bucks on a hat with his signature on it. Well, on Craig’s List, there was his 6th World Championship hat, signed, along with his 1:18 scale model car… all for 30 bucks. Even though I’m saving up for a wedding, I couldn’t pass it up. I haven’t been this proud of a purchase for a very long time. Here are some pictures of it! Woot!






I was just a tad disappointed on the model though. Michael Schumacher won his 6th world championship in 2003, but the model is his 2002 car. That’s just a minor thing though when I think about it. Only people who are obsess about Formula 1 would notice it, unless they flipped the car upside down. However, I do love how much detail went into that model!



When I called the guy who was selling them, he and I chatted for almost an hour because there are almost zero F1 fans in America. Because of that he said he’d also throw in a smaller model of Nikki Lauda’s 1975 F1 car. Super Awesome!



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Anyway, that’s all the really cool stories that I have from the past three weeks… hopefully it took you less than three weeks to read all this fairly pointless (unless you’re me) stuff.

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That was a good question Mark, I have no idea which jersey Cameron was wearing without watching it again or using Google.

So I asked Rebecca for a movie quote for this one and she said, “Uhhh… Jillowatts!” Sometimes, she's just too adorable.

Here's my quote, "This turtle food has more moths than flies..."

I wrote this yesterday.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Mom’s passing, and I’m still pretty down. I guess that’s to be expected and all, but I’m still forgetting that I cannot call her for both the good and bad news of stuff in my life. No one could commiserate like she could. I decided that I needed a change of environment and a place where people won’t tread egg shells with me. I am currently on vacation.

I drove down to my friend’s house in Phoenix yesterday. I haven’t made this drive for a long time. In fact the last time I drove down here is when I owned my Saturn. This trip went a lot smoother, I decided to learn from my last mistake and I avoided that 5½ hour detour that took me to San Louis Obispo. So, instead of 17 – 18 hours, it only took 12. The only real complaint I had about the drive was that my Cruise Control is broken and after about 10 hours, my right knee started to ache pretty bad. There was some really cool stuff on the drive though. I found myself envying some of the cars that I passed. For this kind of drive, where it’s just straight roads with no curvy mountain roads, I really wish that I had a good ol’ American Muscle Car. I saw just the one I wanted to take this trip with too. The brand new Dodge Challenger SR/T 8. I can’t believe how big a car nut I am. I take an 800 mile trip and I don’t talk about the sights, I talk about the cars I see. I can go on about them too. For instance, just after I crossed from California to Arizona, on an over pass I saw a bright red big rig with a red trailer. On the trailer it said “Ferrari / Maserati Motorsport.” I actually took that exit because I really wanted to follow it. But I had a moment of clarity and told myself that I didn’t know where it was going, nor whether it was going somewhere or coming back home where they certainly wouldn’t let me see what was in the truck, so therefore I got back on the freeway and continued on my way to Arizona. Outside that there wasn’t any excitement at all. I listened to a book on CD (the 4th Harry Potter book) and a few CD’s that I made specifically for this trip. I stopped for gas a couple of times, grabbed some lunch after the second fuel stop. It was good though. I was able to think about nothing. That’s kind of rare for me. When I’m awake, I rarely zone out. I think that’s why I play so many computer games… to help with that. But this trip, I was able to just put the car in 5th, arm on the window sill, and just not think about anything. I arrived in Arizona about 7 local time (6 Pacific) and was in a genuinely good mood.

I was greeted by my friend Jason. He has just bought his first house and he lives here with the Girlfriend and his daughter. He plays it down, but I could tell that he is really proud of his new house. And I’m telling you what, these house prices make it very tempting to live here. It’s a 3000 sq. ft. 3 bed 2 ½ bath with a small back yard and his mortgage is fifty bucks less than the rent for my 900 sq. ft. one bed one bath apartment. Joel (one of the owners of the company I work for) has hinted at starting an office here in phoenix, and I’ve got to say, I’m mildly interested. No. Now that I think of it, it’s January and it was about 80 degrees today. I couldn’t bear it. Maybe if I had enough cash for a winter house I’d consider it, but not full term living. Anyway, back to my arrival to my friend’s house. He showed me around, then we just shot the breeze a bit (Shannon, his girlfriend, was there too) when Shannon’s father swung by with their daughter Adrina. I saw Adrina last October when Jason and Shannon were in town, and in those few short months, their baby turned into a person. By that I mean in October, she would play and run around and stuff, maybe use single word sentences to communicate, but when she saw me yesterday she said “Hi! Come along, I want to show you my house.” It was a little hard to understand, but it was all there. That rapid amount of development staggers me every time I see it. She’s a bundle of energy! The first thing she did was take me to her little play room which was the closet underneath the stairs. She told me about all her toys, and her dress up stuff. Then after she had spent those few minutes showing me, she took me by the hand and led me to their kitchen where she had her own little play kitchen. She gave me a few pieces of face fruit which a promptly began to juggle which made her go mental. She loved it and within 15 seconds she was attempting it too. It reminded me of Ethan a lot. I’m not sure if you remember Rilla, but he would hold two objects, and then spread his legs wide, then just spazzing out with the objects still in his hands. Well, Adrina did the exact same thing and I couldn’t help but laugh. After playing with Adrina, and chatting with Shannon’s dad for a while, I finally remembered to give Rebecca a call and I thought she was going to be super pissed at me, but she forgave because of my super cute excuse. Jason and I then played some video games for close to an hour before going to bed.

This morning I woke up pretty late, 10 or so PST, and had a fairly lazy morning. While Jason was kind enough to let me crash at his house for the week, he just couldn’t get the time off work so he wasn’t about. I got on Google to check out what kind of sites I could see around Phoenix and found out that there really isn’t much to do here. A few of the things I’ve done before, like “Castles and Coasters” which is a mini-golf place with an absolutely killer Arcade, but I’m on a fairly tight budget this week and decided that If I do go there, it will only be once; better not waste it on the first day. I decided to look to see if I could find a store that sells NHL hats because Jason’s taking me to a Hockey game on Tuesday. The Phoenix Coyotes are playing the Detroit Red Wings and since I’m not a huge fan of Hockey I didn’t really have a team. I decided to throw my support (however slight it might be) behind the Red Wings. What can I say; I love cars (hooray Motor City). The weekend before driving out here I was looking for one of these Hats, but Sacramento is not by any means a Hockey town so I was only able to find one child sized San Jose Sharks hat. So, I drove down to a mall today and did a little shopping. There still wasn’t much in the Hockey Department unless I wanted Coyote’s stuff. But I was finally able to track down a Red Wings hat. I bought a few other things as well; I grabbed Rebecca a birthday present, and a board game (I’ve needed “Go” for a while).

When Jason got home from work we chatted s’more and played s’more video games before grabbing some food. We went to a place called Fajitas, and had some of the best damn fajitas I’ve ever had. We came back, did more of the same, and now I’m here typing on Mom’s old Sony Vaio. Rebecca and I went through it and I found a file full of my stuff and found some staggeringly crappy writing I had done when I was drawing a lot of Anime. I started to type out a “Manga” (Japanese Anime style comic book) that I was going to illustrate myself as well. Well, no matter how terrible it was it got me thinking about another project I was going to do. And I was going to do it with Jason as well! He and I wanted to do a Comic book, well more of a graphic novel, together. He and I came up with several ideas, but nothing really came from them. I think I’m going to be spending a lot of the free time I’m going to have this week writing a lot of those notes out and expanding on them. The rough idea for what we want to do is a story about a ship with a small crew trying to find a planet with resources because the Human race has used all of ours up. Since the Human race is so desperate because they’re on the brink of disaster, they even try to take those resources by force. This is where I think the story is going to be most interesting. We’ve all heard the story where aliens come to earth and try to kill us all (Independence Day, Mars Attacks), but in the end we (the inhabitants of the planet) fight off the evil invaders and live happily ever after. We all know that story, but the story that I can’t remember ever hearing is the story of the invaders. What brought about the desire to invade a completely foreign planet? What are the repercussions for their defeat? What do they plan to do if they succeed? Is there a contingency plan? Was there a better and more diplomatic way of dealing with that situation? Maybe it’s my fascination with propaganda that makes me think these questions whenever I hear a story about wars and whatnot, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Well, back to the logistics of this project, Jason and I were working on it about a year ago. He’s got some notes, and I have some sketches. Our first idea was that he was going to be doing the writing and I would be doing the drawing, but I think it’s more going to be me writing, and drawing, or more correctly, doing the sketches then at a later date commission someone to draw them properly. Jason I’m sure will still have a rather major role in the development of this project, but I don’t think it’s going to be as direct as originally thought. But hey, who knows. All I know is that I’m going to have a lot of down time this week and I have to do something with my time and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) I’m getting a little bored of just playing video games all day. I must be actually growing up.

Anyway, it’s already 12:30 on the 19th, so I’m going to wrap this up here. I’m sorry that this post wasn’t very coherent. I just started writing without any real thought to what I was saying. I’m fairly certain I’ll be writing another post this week. See you later.

-Rob

I’m surprised that no one got my “Snatch” quote last time.

Anyway, here’s a new, and much easier one (this movie also has a Detroit Red Wings tie in.)
“A. You can never go too far, and B. if I get busted, it’s not going to be by a guy like that!”

I haven't forgotten about my Blog

But since I only have the 3 readers, and we've been pretty much together for the past week I haven't had anything to really write about that you don't already know.

Anywho... Movie Quote:

"Mad fish Harry went mad, and John the Gun shot himself.