Still good in the world.

If you really know me, you know that most of my time is spent observing others. I enjoy watching and listening to others, very quietly from afar. And if you really know me, and actually get the stuff from inside my head to the outside world you know I how displeased I am with the meanness and hatred in the world. I observe it all too often, more and more each day :(

Well, Christmas eve I was reassured there is still goodness present in the world. :) and I want to thank that individual for being good.

The story goes like this..... A week ago Friday we were hit with a fun at the time but annoying nasty little snow storm. Within a few hours of it starting we had a very heavy blanket of snow. Assuming (yes its bad to assume) my car aka "clown car" would go good in the snow I had driven it over the van aka "Thing" that morning. Also, since 99.9% of the time the weather men miss the forecast I was a villager when they cried wolf yet again. Well my assumption was dead wrong, the clown car is awful in the snow, actually one of the worst cars I have owned for snow travel. Well, by 2pm when I decided to venture home from work I couldnt make it far. I did get too, with considerable effort, to my driveway. Or better said the entrance of my driveway. Since I live on a hill, and its uphill to the driveway I decided that leaving my car at the entrance was a good place to have it slammed into by cars coming down the other side. So, I opted to move the car to the vacant lot next door (down hill) of which I did. Little did I realize of ever observe was that spot never sees the light of day.
Well, after many attempts all week I decided I was going to get the clown car out of the field and back home in the warmth of the garage. I like my clown car.....
Joseph and I venture down to dig it out yet again. No luck.... the car just spins. I really think the issue was it sits so low to the ground snow builds up under it and the wheels never touch the ground with 4" or more of snow. After a good half hour of digging and pushing I decided to go get the come along and winch it out.
Strapped off to a tree with 2 tow straps and the come along in between we start trying to pull it out. Now, let me say, that the main road (Concord rd) is maybe 20 ft from the car, and in full view of everyone traveling up and down Concord. I cant tell you how many 4 wheel drive trucks, redneck mobiles (4wd trucks jacked up) pass by. Many slowing up enough to watch me, in Santa hat, and Joseph attempting to winch out the car. I commented more than once "you'd think someone would stop and offer to help pull us out" of course with %#@^&%$ words intertwined.
Finally this truck pulls up and a guy jumps out and says need a hand? Sure do I reply! He backs up to my car, gets his front tires on dry pavement and we hook the tow strap to the front of the car. I jump in, start the car and he begins to pull me out. He blocked traffic coming down Concord Rd pulling me out, but within a minute had me pulled out of the field and onto the road!
I tell the guy, who I regret not getting a name, if you will come up to the house I will give you a few bucks! He said, No Thanks!, Merry Christmas.

There is still good left in the world! Thanks for that reassurance.

Festivus for the rest of us!

Forgot to wish everyone a Merry Festivus yesterday! So made up for it with a holiday card sent to all my email friends. Grievances are aired here and you will have to see me in person for feats of strength!

Those ribs be hurting

Several days ago, in my anxious-ness to get out early in the moring I took a nice fall. Walking thought the snow down to "thing" (van) I reach the area I had shoveled the day before. I remember thinking I wonder if this is slick..... well before I got "slic...." out of my head I was on the ground. As usual I had a camera sling over my shoulder, and I landed on my side on the camera. Yes, the first thing out my mind after the fall was what did I break on the camera, which happend to be the UV filter (again). But the fall took my breath as I hit hard. Well, I have cracked, broke, damaged or all of the above the upper section of ribs on my left side. DAMN they hurt! I forgot how much ribs hurt.... done this a few times before, that is crack some ribs. Once on a bike in the woods and several times through my life playing football.
Hard to sleep, as this is the preferred side I sleep on. You how it is when you get in a habit.... If I sleep on my back, Annette tells me I snore. Well I stayed up one night and I did snore ;), LOL. Been some restless nights of sleep since then, and I am sure more to come. Ribs are a good 6 weeks healing, Great! Hard to ride the bike too, tried the trainer and it hurt when I started heavier breathing.
On to other things.....

Been working on a cool wood design over at the house I have worked so much at in Bilomore Forrest. An angular design on the walls using 4" wide flooring red oak. Its coming out pretty darn nice! Pictures soon, I have been shooting progress shots so far.

Soon to start a large design project for Day International, which should provide me several months of steady work, lets hope it leads into more! I think the timing will work out nicely with the work I have going in Biltmore Forrest, should be close to finishing it as I start the other.

Computers.... Well Joseph's laptop is down, under warranty with Best Buy. Yet another Best Buy saga, with them sending it off to repair. What is it the Geek squad does? Its the hard drive, 90% postivie which is a quick easy fix for me. My laptop started acting up, thought it was the hard drive, which I am replacing anyway. I need reliable stuff when I start drawing and a hard drive deciding to crash isnt what I need with months of data (I do back-up to an external) Plus the larger hard drive I am sticking on will allow me to dual boot Ubuntu linux, which I will use to surf abroad.

Speaking of Ubuntu, when the drive crashed on this laptop I was unable to boot into windows. I had a few things I needed, my business books, a few drawing files and thats about it. Figured I would lose that data, but I was able to load a live cd of Ubuntu (runs the os off of a cd) and access my files in the windows system. Pretty cool trick! I need to verify those files but it seemed to work just fine.

Enough typing, my hand are frost bit from sitting in Starbucks and typing and not staching them in my pocket

Snow!

Almost a foot of snow fell yesterday here in cool green Asheville! Pretty cool! We havent had this much snow is quite a long time.

Hey thats a bleeder....

Guess the big news of yesterday other than my venture to the mall (more on that later)was m mishap yesterday afternoon. After a day of trying to clean the carpet downstairs, which I am yet still unsuccessful I finished the afternoon with 5 stitches in my forehead.
The story goes like this: After renting a steam cleaner from Ace hardware I finally get my family out of the house and Josephs room picked up, which is a task itself. I mix the solution and dump it in the cleaner. Fire it up and squeeze the trigger and nothing..... Check my connections, still nothing. Vacuum works, no pump spraying solution. Great! Load the unit up and begin to take it back to Ace.
The I get a phone call from Sammie, the lady I work for in Biltmore Forrest. Her garage door wont open, and she's heading back to Atlanta. So I head over to her house and begin to work on getting the door up and her on her way. Now this is a commercail door, all metal and what ever width a 2 car single door would be, and HEAVY. Get it fixed after some work. Well in the mean time I am telling Sammie about the steam cleaner and she says borrow mine. Didnt know she had one to borrow but why not. So load it up and head to Ace to return the defective one, which I did.
Since I am in no rush I head to the mall, 2 Saturdays before Christmas, well you get the picture. It was bad, but I dealt with it just fine. Took all my usual shortcuts and was in and out without any major issues
Get back home and proceed to unload the carpet cleaner I am borrowing from Sammie. Carry the main unit inside and set it in Joseph's room next to the new (used) Soloflex I got for him and I. Go and get the 2 water containers that I had removed from the unit and carry them inside. I go over to where I parked the main unit, which is right under the Soloflex. I bend over to set the container down and WHACK!!! I slam my forehead into the end of the weight bar. Have you ever seen lights and stars when you hit your head? Well I saw them yesterday.... Holding my head I feel that warm sensation of blood running down my face. Great split the forehead open. Grab my shirt and put pressure on the cut, sit down on the steps and regain what little composure I normally have, then head up stairs to take a look. Lets just say that head cuts bleed, a lot. Shirt covered in blood and it wont stop. Change from my shirt as a pressure device to a clean washcloth. After 45 minutes of pressure its still bleeding. Oh joy a trip to the ER, Urgent care or something at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon.
Annette and Joseph arrive from the mall and as expected Annette goes nuts, and Joseph in the eyes of his Dad, starts wise cracking the situation. After a quick phone call to the Urgent Care, which has already closed its time to go to the ER. Fast Track ER, which means it kills 4 hours of your time instead of the customary 6 hours. A misnomer in words..... So I suggest calling a friend of ours, lets call him Dr. X just in case someone actually reads this and is mean enough to get him in trouble over whats soon to take place. Dr X is answers the phone, in the middle of putting a chest tub in someone, No lie here. He says sure send me over in just a little while and he will take of me. Dr X is a great guy, done a lot for us over the years and not one to follow rules, which is good. The world needs more people that do stuff because they should, can or want and not doing something because some bureaucrat says not to.
So off to Dr X's house. I have a bandage on my head as I am still bleeding if I release pressure, and of course my Christmas hat. Dr X and I shake hands and head to the kitchen table. Sure enough I cut a nice gash in my head, not that big but crescent shaped. He determines I have knicked a feeder vain which is why it wont stop bleeding. To bad, as that rules out glue according to Dr X. SO here comes the stitches. Michael, Dr X's son is recruited to be his assitant and Joseph is recruited to hold the flash light. The only that really hurt was the lidocane that I got to numb my forehead. I look over and Joseph is white as a ghost, LOL. Dr X sees this and suggest he sit down, no complaints from Joseph. Guess that rules him out becoming a Doctor, which is good to know. After some cleaning, scrubing, numbing the stitching begins. Joseph's color comes back somewhat and he is able to hold the light and begin to watch Dr X sew me up. I will admit, seeing that sometimes freaks me out, luckily I wasnt watching Dr X sew me up. 5 stitches in all and what soon will be a nice headache.
Whats cool about this is it was all preformed at the kitchen table. It was sterile, no worries there, I trust Dr X with my life, and have told Annette if they ever drag me in let him do the work if its in his arena. He preformed something that has long past, true medicine because he loves to help. Not forcing me to go to the ER, office or where ever, but at his kitchen table.
My Thanks for Dr X !

Brrrrr, its cold

Its cold out, 22 degrees as of when I drove in, and as usual Starbucks isnt a whole lot warmer inside. Suppose to get up to 42 degrees today, not real warm to me.

I guess if I didnt have a family (glad I do) I'd migrate with the birds south. Just dont deal with the cold temps as well as I did when I was younger. I now understand why the "old" folks go to Florida for the winter, its not a bad idea.

So a good friend of mine, someone I consider more of a brother than a friend sent me a joke i thought was pretty funny yesterday. EVEN though I really could care less what Tiger did.

"Q: What is the difference between Santa and Tiger Woods?

A: Santa’s not greedy, he stops with three ho’s!"

Solar Flares

Thats my excuse and I am sticking to it, Solar Flares that is.

Started off as one of those days yesterday and never got much better. First, unable to connect to the net at Starbucks in the morning. Thats my peaceful time every day, I check and answer most of my emails, surf, learn or what ever over my daily coffee. When I cant get hooked up I get cranky.... Thought it was a ATT connection problem with there hot spot, but turns out it was a puter issue. Not sure actually what was going on, I had logged onto this computer mid day the day before to register my design software so I could pull up some design work. No problems at the fab shop, worked just fine. Next morning, nada.... All I can think is either 1) Solar flares 2) some sort of virus, glitch or something when I logged into the hot spot.

So I spent most of the evening screwing with this computer. Now, the FIRST thing I tell people when they are having troubles is STAY OFF THE PORN SITES and you wont have issues. Well, I can honestly say THIS computer doesnt see those sites, this is the business computer.

So, what to do..... Did a system restore and that fixed the problem, updated Vista (crap compared to 7) Slapped the Ubuntu disk in and almost stuck in on the puter as a dual OS, and may still. Have a Win 7 disk and prod key free, really really should put 7 on it, but that leads to software issues. I typically run 1 version back of my design software, just becasue Autodesk products NEVER work right on the latest releases. Running 2009, but 2010 is out. Always, always bugs with the latest and greatest. SO, not sure if 2009 runs on 7, Autodesks site is a bit unclear on if it does or doesnt. SO..... I cant install a os that blows my money maker up, which is also why I dont go surfing on this puter much, no bugs, virus's or goofy programs that mess with the video drivers. Still not sure what I am going to do on this system...

Then Joseph and I get the new released Harry Potter in Blue Ray. FINALLY sit down to watch it at 8pm last night in the theater room on the PS3. PS3 tells us we gotta update the software to watch the movie, WTF! SO that turns into a issue.... PS3 doesnt want to connect to the server either wireless or wired, ended up d/l'd it on a flash drive and installing the update that route. All to watch 45 minutes of the movie before Joseph decides he was bored (almost 10pm) which was fine I was tired.

On top of all that I have a banking screw up on MY part..... Damn.

Must have been the solar flares. Lets hope there better today, so far so good.

Happy happy Joy joy rain on its way.

Happy happy joy joy, more rain on the way.

Anyone remember the "happy happy joy joy"? Came from Ren and Stempy cartoon (I guess it came from there). I used to love Ren and Stempy!, guess I still do.

Glad Monday is behind me, it was one of those Monday's. Today is shaping up better I hope, long but better.

Weathermen missed, back to the cold

Weathermen missed the storm, after all the storm warnings, accumulation forecasts and all the other stuff they posted we got the Nada..... It was cold, they did get that right.

Starbucks is back to its frigid temps inside, Brrrrr.

Will the weather guys get one right?

Snow in the forecast, raining now.

The question is will the weather guys actually get one right? The weather channel is already preparing a future show on the yet to happen snow storm forecast for today. Not sure there title but my suggestions are as follows: "The great storm of December 5th, 2009, that never happened....." or my favorite, " How weather changed history; Grandma got below a 1/2 gallon of milk and 8 pc's of bread but still survives."

On another note, Fox News is also hard at work on the pending storm and how the current administration is to blame. Current program direction is for a round table discussion including chicken little's caulk board diagrams.

Apologies to anyone that reads this and enjoys Fox News and their preconceived notion programing. I had to suffer through a hour of it last night while working at a home. The homeowner had it on the whole time I was there and honestly hadnt ever really listened to station that long, I unfortunately left my Ipod and headphones at the house.

New tripod? Sofia!

Shot some moon setting shots on the way to Lowes yesterday and used the tripod since I was shooting the long lens with tele-converter. STRONG wind.... tripod wouldnt be still, all shots were blurry. SO, my stash cash may have to go initially towards a new tripod :( Wish the shots would have come out better, but I was on a ridge top with no shelter with 20mph winds, but to shoot good landscape I need a decent tripod....

Well still saving towards the new camera body.

Did shoot some nice images at the Grove Park last night. Rather proud of myself overall. I am shooting fully manual, and have been for some time now, but was shooting with the dreaded pop up flash plus manual and still got some good shots.

So far my favorite.... still needs some post processing.

Warm and Cozy

Starbucks is warm and cozy and has been since I arrived at 6am!

Early start this morning, guess going to be at 9:30 made me wake up even earlier. Already spent 40 on the trainer, probably do so again this afternoon. When the weather sucks its nice to have that set up. But, seems like I have been riding it more and more and less and less outside.

Speaking of outside riding, NPR did a pc on the cyclist in Cal that had the altercation with the car. The outcome of that altercation was better than the one locally where a local fireman shot a guy in the helmet. Luckily for that guy, his child who was in a child carrier on the bike and his wife the fireman missed the guys head and it only went through his helmet. The fireman got 120 days.....

The whole situation is getting out of hand IMO. I really think the news media and their constant hate campaigns against whatever then can stir up is carrying over to the real world. To easy behind the wheel of a car to act tough and take cheap shots at not only cyclist but other cars.

I will admit there are as many poor examples set by cyclist as there are drivers, but thats no excuse for EITHER side to carry on like they are, maybe its time for some education on the behalf of both sides.

Who cares what Tiger was doing.

Honestly news media, do we really care what Tiger was doing? Lets see, a low speed crash in front of his house with no causalities. But, the smear stations need more ammo for their daily programing.

Starbucks must have found the heat button today, or so it seems in the past 10 minutes. Cold to start but warm air blowing from the duct work!

On a political note, Not real happy with our current administration, of whom many including myself voted for some change. Same old war crap from the govt....

I am against war, against killing of human life. Killing another human being solves no problems, it only creates more problems. And for all you bible thumpers out there who support the current wars (or any) and the death penalty. One of the commandments says thou shalt not kill. I dont seem to remember any foot notes.

Mr Moon is oh so quick!

6:20am, crest the hill on Mills Gap on my way to Chill-Bucks (Starbucks) and there is old Mr Moon on it decent below the horizon. Very large and bright orange, something I seem to chase as a photgrapher. But, about as quickly as I descend Mills Gap Rd on a quick venture to some location close, other than framing the shot over Ingels, Mr Moon disappears.
Not sure how many realize that the Moon moves quick, and the close it gets to the horizon the quicker it seems to go. From 6am to 7am today, the move drops close to 20 degrees above to below the horizon.

If your interested in the moons movement here is a good link http://www.dailymoonposition.com/Default.aspx