LaserBlog.com

While at Mom’s condo today, some punks sprayed a fire extinguisher into a neighbor’s window, filling the place w/ a cloud of that chemical.  The neighbor called the cops and 5 cop cars came.  She said the stuff burned her nostrils when she breathed it.  You’re not supposed to breathe the stuff, what *ssholes to do that.  That lady is nice, too.  There are some real mean people who live there, but no, the kids targeted a nice lady.  OH well.  At least nobody was hurt.  But boy, she has a lot of cleaning up to do now (it left all kinds of residue in her place).

We just took the dogs dog-scootering on our new kickbikes. It’s REALLY fun, I highly recommend kickbikes.

(and now I feel nausious… blech.  I need to get back in shape!)

kw: scooter, scooters, scootering, kickbike, kickbikes

I got my nose pierced yesterday.

Hee hee. 

It only hurts when I forget it’s there and bang it or catch it.

Stayed up late, slept late. Went for sushi. Then got Pumpkin Spice Lattes drive-thru at Starbucks and took them to my mom’s and we hung out, talked, and I doodled in my Moleskine. Then M. came over and hung out after work. We came home, cooked dinner, and I took a couch-nap (my favorite thing to do). I got up, had coffee, and now I have a stomach ache. Ich. I’m downloading the pix off my Nikon S6 via wifi, and also via wifi, uninstalling and reinstalling Shozu because all of a sudden today it decided to crash every time I tried to load it. [edited to add: and now the install is crashing too, yayyyyy.] I’m tired, but since I feel like I didn’t DO anything today, I don’t want to go to bed just yet. And so the cycle repeats.

update: Uninstalling and reinstalling shozu seemed to do the trick.  yay. 

Well I guess this new version is active and the blogsome one will become an “archive”.

It’s Friday. I’m tired, I was up all night. But what’s new, right?

I want to keep working on the site right now, but I really need to get out of the house. Maybe take the pug for french fries and then go to Petco or something.

Oh, I ordered a new 3 megapixel camera phone w/ bluetooth and wifi! I hope it hurries up and gets here! It’s a Nokia N80. Check out the link, there’s a good youtube video about it there.

My visitors have left for the airport, so now I am at the library, hiding, reading, writing, blogging, and surfing for books to look up while here.

I love libraries and bookstores and coffee houses.

I’m still angry from last night re. my (now) former client. But at least I’m calmer.

I had Thai food for lunch w/ a sushi appetizer and am now surrounded by books, so I am one happy camper.

Went to see Harry Potter at the matinee today w/ a friend. Then went for sushi w/ her, then shopping for Coffee Mate, then home. After hanging out for a bit, M and I went for Indian food and then to Wa1 Mart Hell.

M is building a small computer, all the parts came today, it’s to run our home security system. We got a kick-butt custom pro security system, but we are going to add motion-detect floodlights/cameras and this will be the controller/recorderfor it, a small cube case, portable style, kinda like a shuttle pc, but blue, w/ blue lights, and a 4 line input video card. This will run Linux.

Tonight I watched ghost shows on tv, played Mario Kart DS via the internet, made flavored coffee, and am thinking of going to bed “early” for a Friday night.

Oh, tomorrow we are going to a paranormal group meeting. I went to one a few weeks ago, and this is a second group.

So… in our neighborhood, over the 4 years we’ve lived here, it’s been a pattern that people will ring doorbells late at night to “case” a house, to see who’s a light sleeper, who has barking dogs, who’s home, etc., and then within a few days they will break in. This has been going on again and one of our neighbor’s got broken into (their cars) and down the street, last week, on the same night that this bell-ringing was going on, a house was found with it’s door wide open and the owners were out of town. The doorbell ringers have been targeting our house and so we put up a few cameras. Well last night we got them on video. (image one || image two)

What kills me is that we had THREE cameras pointing out the front windows and the guy NEVER EVEN LOOKED! He has no idea he was caught on tape! Dumb ass!

We also had the sheriff’s dept. come out and they took the still photos and said they’d come back for the video if anything happened. I also posted to the website for our neighborhood hoping the kid’s parents would see it (I think he looks like a teenager) or that someone who knows who he is will email me.

Also we got a security system put in today. It’s really great, custom features, I’m happy w/ it.

I have a plan to do a stake-out out front. Sit in my car w/ the tinted windows w/ my night-vision camcorder and see what theses guys are really doing. M noticed on the video that guy #2 seemed to do a hand-signal to someone down the street, then shortly after a minivan went by. I did a test tonight and sat in my car when M came home from getting takeout at the pizza place and he never saw me. Since all the schools are closed ’till at least Monday (power is out all over the place from the hurricane), every night lately has been like a friday night. Ours is one of the few neighborhoods that has power, so everyone is having friends over who don’t have power. The streets are filled w/ people taking walks since we’re having January-cool weather and everyone has company over. Because of all this I expect these guys to come back. I want to see if they get in or out of a minivan, if there are others, if they are bothering other homes or just us, and ALSO if he goes up to our door, then on his way back from the doorstep I’m going to hit the panic button on my car’s key fob just to give him a startle. That’ll also make M come out. Meanwhile, all of it on tape. Little balless fucker.

I told the cop who came last night an idea my neighbor had; Print out the guy’s picture and hang it on the doorbell so that he knows we have his face. I wasn’t sure if this would instigate a war w/ this guy or if it was a good idea. The cop smiled and said it was a great idea. So I hung one on the doorbell and one inside the window by the door.

We had my sony handycam hc-30 on a tiny tripod on the floor in the window, that’s what caught them. We also had a motion-detect night-vision camera up high in the same window, not recording. We ALSO had the pencam in the living room window from when we set it up as a Hurricane Cam. THREE and the guy never noticed! Frankly, he looks like a dumb redneck to me, but that’s just my personal opinion.

And so what if he looks like “just a teenager”.? Teenagers can break into houses and steal cars. The cop said he’d like to talk to him about trespassing, harassment, breaking the post-hurricane 9pm curfew, and ask him a few questions, as they say, about recent crimes in our neighborhood. I also mentioned this on the website along w/ his picture. I hope he or his parents find out and shit a gold brick.

Sometimes I just don’t feel like blogging, like… I have nothing to say, nothing’s new, and any links I find are not worth sharing. It’s just a mood thing.

I can’t sleep, so I’m sleeping half the day away, not getting work done (business or housework). I need to go take care of “the farm” and then head out to run errands, whoo hoo…

Check the moblog for boring pictures of my boring day…

p.s. we’re gonna dress M’s dog up as M’s cat for halloween! LOL!

Phantom last night was awesome. I just want to listen to the soundtrack all day and all night and watch the movie over and over again.

Today I slept in, went to subway, starbucks [do get the Pumkin Spice Latte!], costco, petco, target, arbys, home… napped, got up…

Got some more video games today at Costco. Most of Gamespot.com is down right now for maintenance so I can’t add them to my “collection” list. GameSpot.com profile (down).

I got Trace Memories for the DS and Monster Trucks for the Gameboy Advance (plays on the DS)… M got Polarium for the DS and KillerApp for the GBA.

It rained today because we took M’s car which had no umbrellas in it. So at Target we bought two umbrellas and that caused it to stop raining. Now each car has two resident umbrellas. It’ll never rain in southwest Florida again.

Feel better today. Slept until 3pm on Sunday. Then slept in the guest bedroom last night so I could actually SLEEP. Now I have to hop in shower, take dog out, take neighbor’s dog out, go to lady’s house to help her w/ her camera and computer… not all in that order.

But still somehow I still feel tired. Maybe I’m dying. I hope not.

I can’t breathe thru my nose. That affected my “sleeping” last night. Even tho I took an Alavert (or whatever it is) with a decongestant and a nasal spray, I still could not breathe thru my nose.

Pug is barking at me, he has to poo, and I stink, I have to shower. Laters!

Today:

Met mom for lunch.
Went to library w/ mom.
Went to new ice cream parlor w/ mom.
Went home.
Fell asleep on couch (as usual).

This new version of movable type has really tiny print.

There’s this flying bug dive-bombing me in the face, little fucker.

Went for Indian for dinner. Great place. Talked programming w/ the owner, his new wife from India is a web designer. Really nice people.

Went to this place that sells “used music movies and games” but they had one, ONE!!! gameboy advance game and no ds games… or was it one ds game and no gameboy advance games. Whatever. But they did have a HYSTERICAL bobblehead jesus. I wanted it but didn’t get it cuz it woulda been better had it been a “BUDDY CHRIST” from “Dogma“.

Then went to Lousy-Buy.

Then Tar-Jay.

Then home and now we are both playing video games. We rock! LOL!

Stayed up waAAay too late. Went to breakfast w/ mom, then to some video game stores and got some used games for the Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance. M wants a DS now so we are going to put my pink iPod mini and his Gameboy Advance on Ebay this weekend and then he can have my blue DS and I’m going to order the PINK one!

One of the game stores was having a giveaway but we didn’t win. Then Home Depot. Then Big Lots for some Autumn decorations and then stood in line there for probably 35 minutes. Now we’re home and freaking out cuz the BORED HOUSEWIFE BRIGADE of our neighborhood is sending everyone letters for having bits of dirt here and bits of mold there, I fuckin’ HATE them. We hope to do some painting this weekend inside and clean the house and I want to decorate for fall. There is no nip in this south Florida air, but I want to pretend there is anyway.

I went to my old stomping ground today, the planetarium, where I was laserist for 10 years. I got to go to a private viewing of some new cutting edge full dome technology. A digital planetarium that can replace the traditional starball, fly through the universe, play full-dome movies, simulate an aquarium, and more. It was really neat to be surrounded by people who understand technology in this town. I may go back Thursday morning for another viewing, but that means I better get to bed right quick.

Comments are still down until M can help me figure out how to blog comment spam. So find my email addy and/or I.M. contact info to contact me instead.

It’s my birthday week, yay! I’m so freaking old it’s not even funny.

Do you digg? Add me as a friend so you can see which stories I digg and I you.

My new car rocks on road trips. It drives so smooth, I had no idea I was doing 100!

I have to go run around and do some stuff, get persriptions at pharmacy, grocery shop, maybe go to the planetarium for a preview of this new technology. But M might be getting off work early cuz he went in at like 3am.

I just bit my tongue. The inside of my mouth is all torn up. I keep biting my cheek over and over and over. I need braces, my tooth sticks out causing me to keep biting myself.

I seem to be missing the point re. the sleeping pills my dr. gave me. I stay up till like 4:30 am and then take a sleeping pill to help me sleep in spite of M’s snoring and then I sleep ’till 1:30pm. That’s not why they were given to me. I need to take the sleeping pill at like 11 or 12 (which is ‘early’ for me) and get up at a reasonable hour rather than sleep my whole freaking day away.

I have lots of errands to run, I need to bill my clients, and I’m not very focused while on this terrible sleeping schedule at all.

I need to take The Pug for a butt-squeeze (apparently pugs need to have their anal glands “expressed” once in a while and I AIN’T DOIN’ IT!!!), we have overdue library books, I have to bill my clients, I have to corner another client (they paid me the down payment and yet have no time to tell me what they want besides “a website”), I want to go by a couple video game stores to look at used gameboy advance games… what else… idunno.

We went to a linux meetup tonight. Brought my teeny tiny laptop and my nintendo ds. I love that thing. I am on the hunt for good ds games and good gameboy advance games since the ds takes both games.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to my favorite coffee shop w/ my laptop and nintendo.

Mom drove me to lunch today in her new car. She’s so excited to have a new car! How neat for us both to have brand new cars at the same time. And to think how poor we were for a few years. It’s a nice change.

M went to lunch w/ a buddy while I ran around w/ mom. Then we went for sushi and Thai for dinner. When I got home I was SO tired that I slept from like 9pm to 1:30am. Now here I am watching Call For Help on tv (Yay!) and surfing at 3am.

Slept 8 hours. Slept in the guest bedroom to try to avoid M’s snores (love ya M!), woke up insanely tired. Couldn’t wake up even after getting up and coming downstairs and taking the dog out. Fell asleep on couch for 1.5 hours. Because of this, missed time to shower, went out stinky. Took my car to dealership, they disabled the seatbelt alarm instead of FIXING it and ruined the door handle on my new car that I’ve had, what, less than 3 weeks? But they’re replacing it for free.

Afterwards went and got my first real meal of the day (like after 3pm).

Came home, watched the news and fought sleep on the couch (god i’m messed up) and then we went out to dinner and got gas (for the car AND us, lol). Gas prices are about 2.99/gal for high grade gas. One place was 3.14 for high grade. Yay my new car takes cheap gas. I hope they come out w/ a hybrid version of this car in a few years.

My car is so fun, I took it offroading a few days ago.

The Pug is asleep on the back of the couch and about to fall off. His head is hanging over the edge and when he does that he actually has forehead wrinkles. His tongue is sticking out, too.

It’s too hot to go out photo-ing. Even when I try my camera fogs up: the body, the lens, the mirrors inside, EVERYTHING. I hate Florida.

Where did the weekend go? And how did it get to be almost 4am?

I stayed up watching a movie.

We stayed up late each night then slept in, and today I even took a nap, and I wonder why it’s 4am and I’m not tired.

TWiT #18 is out but it’s still downloading. I’ll get a copy uploaded for sharing probably Monday morning, although it’s easy enough to get now: To get TWiT episodes, go to www.twit.tv to get the mp3 or the torrent, or http://feeds.feedburner.com/twit-hib, http://twit.tv/hi-b, or go into iTunes (the new version) and subscribe to the podcast.

We didn’t get to the Unitarian Church this weekend. We stayed up too late, and we skipped the last Wednesday night social because it involved dancing. Ugh. But tomorrow I meetup w/ a lady from there again. I’m helping her w/ her camera and photography.

We went to a geocaching meetup Friday night and there was a big geocaching thing on Saturday too, but it’s so hot out I just couldn’t face it. Also, M had to log in to work at 6 am after like 2 hours sleep, so it just wasn’t going to work out, which was fine w/ me cuz it’s so damned hot out.

A watch under a pile somewhere just beeped, so it must be 4am. I ought to go to bed.

Well I didn’t take the Allegra D 24 today and I feel totally normal again! The drug website says that less than 3% of ppl have side effects that I had, yet if you hit google you can see that lots of people have reported the same side effects I did.

My crazy pink iPod skin came today.

We went to the geocaching meetup and that was cool. The food was better than I thought it would be (El Golden Corral Buffet) and the people were nice. There’s a big geocaching gathering tomorrow outside during the day in a park. Sounds like a heatstroke freaking nightmare. I’d like to go except for the heat. Not sure, not sure. The heat makes me SICK.

We’d been walking every night w/ our neighbors. The guy next door is REALLY nice, and he likes food as much as I do, so we’re walking together as a group (his family and dog, M and I and our dogs) and it’s been great to get the extra exercise in. But it’s so hot you just wouldn’t believe it. Even after sundown it’s so humid your sweat doesn’t evaporate and you can’t breathe. The dogs pant for over an hour after returning. It’s funny cuz this one neighbor saw us coming and said we looked “intimidating as a group coming at ya”, lol. Let’s see, 4 adults, 2 kids, 3 dogs (one growling and screaming like a psycho monkey).

M is upstairs in the computer room right now trying to get OSX working on his PC. He got it off digg but I’m not sure which link. I just know it was a bit torrent file.

I’ve been bad about reading and the cat is staring at me. She likes the living room and I ought to go sit in there and read with her. We even have library books that are overdue.

Been spaced out for days, Dr said Allegra D 24 was non-drowsy, but it makes me sleep when I’m still, and when I’m not still it makes me spaced out, drugged up feeling. Think I’ll take a day off from it tomorrow to see if I’m better, I’m sure I will be.

The Pug had fun today, he got to go to M1ckyDeees for french fries, then the dog bakery, then to see M at work, then to Petco. He loves car rides! Lots of pix on the moblog, see sidebar.

La la la. M started a huge-ass download before he went to bed and now the ‘net is slow. Guess I’ll go watch tv or read or something. It’s only 2am.

Today was a nice day.

I stayed up late last night and then M woke me up when he was getting ready for work this morning, so I only got about 3.5 – 4 hours of sleep. (!) But the thing is, when he left, I was SO awake that I decided to get up.

I took the pudgy pug and myself for a half hour walk around 8am. It was great; it wasn’t hot, it wasn’t overly-humid, and we got a half hour of exercise in without getting sick from the heat. Then I came inside and did my thing, worked, surfed, and started to get tired. So The Pug and I went back to bed and got some more sleep. When I got up it was raining (as is normally the case during the day in this part of Fl.) so I was glad I’d gone for a walk when I did. Then I hit the gym, took a shower and watched the fire on tv until M got home from work.

Then we went for Thai Food for dinner, my FAVORITE (that and sushi and Indian food). After that we hit Books-A-Million and I managed to overspend as I usually do in bookstores. I got Custodians of Truth and The Case For A Creator and the current National Geographic w/ the whole King Tut In A Cat Scan Thing… as if I don’t have ENOUGH to read!

Now I’m home, having caffiene and getting ready to curl up on the new leather couch and read. The dogs are HYPER!!! Running around the family room and panting and grunting and attacking eachother. The A/C said it was 75 but we’re still warm so we set it to 74. I can never get cool enough in this state. Ok, I’m gonna go read now.

Helllo world.

I went to bed “early” last night and then slept in, so going to bed early doesn’t seem to help me really get up any earlier.

Then I fell asleep on the couch for 1-2 hours right after getting up. I wonder if the sleeping pill was just too strong. It’s supposed to only work for 8 hours, but, idunno…

Then I took The Pug to the vet for his check-up.

The weather’s rainy. The pug and I shared french fries in the car.

Now I’m home.

Boring.

Not much to say.

I guess I shouldn’t have taken that 3-hour nap this evening. Now it’s almost 4am and I’m not tired…. again. *sigh*

It’s 1:30am. I’ve been online for a long time chatting and surfing. M is on the Playstation 2 playing games, and I’m getting off the computer because my butt is numb and I’m going to go read for a while. (I’ll add another bookshelf photo tonight.) I just made coffee w/ my favorite coffee maker, the Senseo… highly recommend A+++!!!

Going to a pug meetup at a restaurant by the beach. Check moblog!

OH MY GOD I am wiped out.

I don’t know what changed.

The last time we held a Linux Lan Party/ Install Fest/ Barbeque at our house, we spread the word and few geeks showed up w/ their towers and laptops in hand, and had, well, and install fest and it was great. My dream-gathering: guys, computers, wifi, food, caffiene, music.

This time, the house was overrun with families and kids.

I… just don’t know why it was different this time. I told the same people and spread the word thru the same venues. The geeks couldn’t stay as late because their wives and kids were here and “had” to go, you know how it is.

Maybe word just got out this time and “barbeque” sounded like “family cookout, bring the wife and kids“. I wasn’t prepared for that, food wise, kid-proofing the house-wise, cleanliness-wise. I was expecting 7 or so geeks with cartons of Mountain Dew under their arms like last time. Not special eating utensils and questions about why we don’t have any kiddie DVDs in our house. I’ve got Rocky Horror… and Full Metal Jacket… and Clerks. Will those do?

Kiddie screams, no SHRIEKS, playing with the LOUD squeeky dog toys. The moms were NICE, I have no problem with them. In fact I wouldn’t mind hanging out w/ them sometime. It’s just, I advertised (for lack of a better word) a LAN PARTY, not a family cookout. *shakes head*.

There were about 7 or so little kids.

In case I’m not very clear, I don’t like to be around little kids, ok? No offense to those that have them and love them, to each their own and I respect you if you have or love kids. But *I* don’t want them and I advertised a geek linux install-fest.

Idunno.

(Remember, this is just my personal journal and you may not always like what I have to say, but it’s my journal.)

I’m really worn out. Last time we had a linux lan party, everyone left and I wish they hadn’t. I coulda stayed up all night learning about linux or whatever.

Even my dog is worn out, and usually he’s rarin’ to go by nightfall.

Well, at least I got Linux running on my Fujitsu P1120 finaly!

Hey, what the f*ck? I just noticed that if I do a “copy image location” for my moblog images it comes out as “mail.worldxchange.net..” NOT textamerica.com… What the f*ck??? THAT’S ODD.

Uh, anyway, so today went ok considering I was totally unprepared in every way for the # of and ages of people who came today.

At one point I went to step over the lattice doorway blocker we have to keep the pug in the family room….

… and I caught my foot, didn’t lift my leg high enough. I fell. HARD. My foot got caught so I hurt my foot. I impaled my tit. That hurt. And did all this while pivoting on my shin bone, and now there’s a huge-ass lump and bruise. Schweeeeeeet.

I’m going to bury my head in some ice cream now.