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Finally made a decision and bought a bike. Ended up going back to a mountain bike; I just didn't want to be confined to road only, but who knows how much real off roading I'll ever do. Ended up with a Gary Fisher Wahoo. Surprisingly, there really weren't a lot of options in the $500-$600 range for bikes. I don't know why it surprised me, my bridgestone that I bought back in college was $550. And it didn't have a front fork and definitely didn't have disc brakes. Having ridden it for just a bit (once to work and back, approx. 8 miles) a couple of observations. The frame is a lot lighter than I remember bike frames. Aluminum for frames was at the high end back in the day, so it caught me off guard that most everything is now. Which, and maybe this in my head, makes the bikes I tested feel a bit strange. It feels like the heaviest parts of the bike are the extremities. Also feels like just about everything on this bike, except for the frame and rear derailer, is pretty low end. Hopefully it holds ...

And a couple that he did, that I didn't pay attention to at the time. In the vein of '1001 rules for my unborn son', I want to lay down some things for Logan. Some will be taken almost directly, some will come from me, and some will come from things my Dad passed to me. Some I don't practice what I preach; I know I should though. This will always be a work in progress. Learn to throw a football/baseball/frisbee. You don't have to be great at it, just get the basics. If someone is required to carry a firearm professionally, they deserve your respect. They've sacrificed more for you than you want to know. Nobody likes a know-it-all. Sometimes, what someone doesn't say is more important than what they are saying. If you're afraid to try something, force yourself to do it as soon as you can; reality is never as hard, or scary, as you've built it up in your head. Over tip breakfast waitresses. Always smile at a pretty girl. You never know. Never side against your sister in a fight. Nobody ever wished on their death bed that they'd spent more time at work. College is a controlled environment where you ...

Not that I watch much TV; this adds a forth season pass to my TiVo. F1 doesn't really count as a show though. That leaves Battlestar Galactica, which has jumped the shark a couple of times now but I'll stick it out to the bitter end just to see how they wrap up. And Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is spotty at best. But I absolutely can't stand reality TV so this is kind of all I have. At some point last summer, Heather and Logan were out of town and I was home working on the house. I was getting ready to start an all day trim caulking project (all the cold weather split most of my joints this winter, so I'll be redoing it all over again soon), that I still haven't painted, and I needed something for background noise. Turned past USAHD, and the Burn Notice intro was playing and it caught my eye. So I sat down and watched part of the episode and kind of kept it on in the background. Ended up being a Burn Notice marathon leading up to the season finale so I left it ...

What a novel fking idea! MTV puts some music videos online; now if they'd just put them back on TV like it says in their name then it'd all be good. Strangely most of the top picked videos right now are 80's stuff. Are us old codgers the only ones that watch music videos now? I tried to pick the absolute lamest video in history to embed. C+C Music Factory |MTV Music

[ the fail blog ] I didn't know about this one ... great for a laugh at other people's expense.

Saw the One Hundred Pushups in 6wks program posted on digg the other day and figured I'd give it a try. I'm on my 2nd week and I'm finding it surprisingly easy, so it shouldn't be too tough to stick with. Next up is the couch to 5k program (yeah, that'll happen). I'm curious if I can adapt the pushup program to crunches ...

We were at Toys R' Us getting Logan an Air Hog plane (long story) and there on the clearance shelf was a big remote control motorcycle. Looked cool, no price tag. Hmmm. I'm figuring, oh this thing's gotta be $50 or so, but I'll check anyway. Find a scanner, scan tag ... $6.80. Huh?!? No, that can't be right. Scan again. $6.80. Well, okay I'll take it to the counter and see if it still rings up as that, and if it does I'll snag it. Fully expecting that it'd ring up at normal price on the front register I was amazed when it rang up $6.80 and said regular price was $8.60. Everywhere on the net, it's $50-$60 so I'm sure somebody screwed up the decimal. Not that an r/c motorcycle was really what I wanted, but even if it doesn't work great, $6.80 is cheap enough that I don't really care.

Have I mentioned I'm going on vacation? When am I going? Oh, not until Saturday, but I've been building this one up for a few weeks now and as far as I'm concerned I'm leaving tomorrow. Work's been killer lately so I'm just trying to lay low, run under the radar and count the days. No last minute, up until 4am projects please. We're taking a cruise this year; we laid down a 5hr flight radius and it was either this or Hawaii. We figured this would be cheaper, but the little stuff is adding up quick and now I'm not so sure. So some tips, that I'm recording for myself more than anything, for cruise planning. Use these questions to gauge the real cost of the cruise above and beyond the advertised price.

Turns out it's old, but it's new to me; so there. And according the the photographer it's not a fake either. And it's obviously no dolphin like the infamous 'shark and surfer' picture. Unfortunately there's no real way of authenticating that this is a great white except to take his word for it. Well. That, and the thing is monsterous. I don't care what kind of shark it is, the guy has big balls. Big brass balls.

I wanted this in the highest possible quality, so with my slow server connection this may take awhile to download. Highly suggest just pausing it, letting it download and then watching it. I don't know how they pulled shutting down streets in Manhattan, Rio and Rome to get this commercial shot. Monoco would've been easy during gran prix weekend. And there's no CGI. Video after the jump.

I'm starting to think the new C-class might be my next car ... if the new A4 doesn't turn out. Absolutely great commercial. Youtube Link

You really just have to go to the site and watch the trailer for yourself; but it's a visual email program where, I shit you not, your emails are presented as people in 3D. Really. Get this, your incoming email walks up to a bouncer which is the spam filter and then it's either sent to a pool (known good) to swim around until you read it, an ice rink (suspected spam) to cool off or to the beach (known spam) to wait to be devoured by great white sharks. Really. If you're still not sold, check out some of these juicy quotes from digg. peregrine - Somewhere, in a darkened office in Redmond, Clippy the Dancing Paperclip is laughing hysterically: "How do you like that for a productivity enhancer, bitches!" fffizzz - lol Who in their tight mind would use this shit? allywilson - I just...Just don't understand?! It's just gotta be spamware. No way some company got developers together that bought off on the idea of coding this crap.