Cucucachoo's Blog

That familiar hum

Our power went out not once but twice three times tonight. The first time it went out was around 8:40 p.m.. That wasn't so bad as to the fact that we had sunlight to play in the yard with. But the second time was around 11:05 p.m.. Not much to do but sit in the dark and chat.

Its funny when the electricity goes out. things get so quiet, not much to be heard in the house. no air-conditioning, no television, nothing. Except, for one thing. The hum from my Compaq Presario Laptop.

After getting the iBook I put my laptop to use as an internal server for storage and printing and to also be able to use my mobile phone tools. There are other programs that I use that I don't have on the mac that I can still utilize. I can even torture myself by using the OS directly on my iBook by using a VNC. I have tried the remote desktop client for the mac. But, like everything else that Microsoft makes (except xbox) it comes up short.

Well after a total of 10 minutes were back on. phew! I didn't know how long I could last with a EDGE service to the net by my cell phones bluetooth connection. I mean imagine, a 115kbps connection speed! Now thats crusin the web.

Do you think i have a slight problem? My wife thinks so.

Mower

If you know me, then you know that I hate, really hate cutting the grass. So as it always happens the grass grows not on my schedule. So yesterday I go out and start to cut my lawn. Now think, I haven't cut it at all this week because of the heat wave we got earlier and due to the rain that came immediately following. As you probably know. The grass grows really fast after rain and it doesn't help that my lawn is made mostly of weeds. None that could make me money either.

So, I gear up and put on my blue iPod, dial in some Pete Yorn, and start to cut grass. I start just as anyone would that cares remotely about there lawn. I use the weed eater, or whacker, what ever you want to call it. This is long over due because I've been out of sting line. I let my neighbor borrow it and had not gotten it back before I ran out. Luckily he is not like Homer Simpson and he gave it back in a timely manner

I don't mind weed whacking. its the mowing part that I hate. But this time it really sucked because all the grass and weeds had grown into a small forest along my sidewalks and fence. So that took a lot of pain yes pain, and time to finish.

Now comes the part I hate. The cutting. It's just a pain in the ass. You mow the lawn and within 3 days you have to do the whole chore again. After cutting the front hill, which is like doing incline bench presses I move on to the back yard.

The back yard is absolutely the worst part of my lawn. It's big, odd shaped, hilly, and there is no shade at all. So as you can tell, it gets hot, damn hot. Well as I finish the back yard I have to move lawn furniture. so that means turning off the mower, moving the stuff and starting the mower again. Did i mention that I really hate cutting grass? After starting up the mower I didn't notice that the pull cord didn't seat back into the little loop that holds it to the handle bar. So the pull cord comes loose and falls to the ground. Unbeknownst to me.

Through sweat burnt eyes I can't see that it is being ran over by the deck and is pulled up into the blade and cut and ripped from the mower. I didn't know this was happening, and I hear a noise from the deck. so I turn off the mower and low and behold there is the pull cord. Damn!

So now, with a half cut lawn looking like a redneck kid with a bad hair cut I have to get my mower rebuilt. Only one thing I hate worse than cutting grass, is a half cut lawn. It really sucks.

Battery Life

You gotta love your local cellular phone representative. The Wife and I went to the Cingular store the other day to up our plan and to see about getting warranty replacements for our cell phone batteries. Our batteries from the start has held close to no charge. We both get about a days worth of standby time and if we talk its even less.

So after talking to this very nice and intelligent man. Or so we thought he was intelligent. We brought up our battery issues and another issue with her phone dropping calls no matter where she is. After looking at my phone, This technologically slow person told me that the reason that our phones wouldn't charge is because they had "dust" on the contacts. The same contacts that are never exposed to the light of day. The ones that press against the battery.

I immediately called bullshit in my head. But, because we had The Little Man with us I decided to not rip the clerks head off and use it as a bowling ball. Instead, I listened to what he had to say, and we left. He said that because there was "dust" on the contacts that the charger wouldn't work right. And that we need to turn our phone off every night to save the battery and to re-establish our connection with the near by tower the next morning.

Is this guy for real!? Does he honestly expect us to believe that because some "dust" which he wiped off with his greasy, fat, fingers would solve the problem? Well, we gave it a try and guess what!? It still doesn't charge correctly. And, The Wife's phone still drops calls like a child with a open container of milk.

So I called Motorola and complained about the battery on my phone. The no doubt foreign lady on the other end quickly took my info and sent me a new battery. Guess what! the battery has been going strong for 2 days now! With dust on the contacts!

Next time i think I'm just going to deal with the manufacture of my equipment. Next, get The Wife's battery and dropped calls dealt with.

Meme

Saw a Meme over at Michelle's blog who says she saw it here. And thought about giving it a go.

1. Believing:: I hear voices in my head
2. Invasion:: of the family
3. Boys:: the,
4. Island:: of the dead
5. Repeatedly:: Stop!
6. Normal:: Not you
7. Hex:: computers
8. Tuxedo:: I need one
9. Virgin:: rare
10. Cereal:: cheerios and milk

iChat vs. MSN Messenger

Ever since I got the iBook I have been wanting to use iChat. After upgrading to Tiger I was happy as a clam to find that it supported Jabber. But, just like AIM I have no buddies on the service. I only use it as a status indicator for this site.

Well if you know anything about Jabber, you know it has things called transports. Well these transports will allow you to connect to your other chat accounts while staying on your Jabber server. Kinda like forwarding your calls from your cell phone to your home phone.

This is why I was so jubilant when it came out. I should be able to connect to my MSN transport and use iChat. Like that could be soooo easy. Yeah, but just like everything else in most of my life, it didn't work. Every time i try to connect to my server I would get "Server not responding". What is that crap!? Well, after hitting the forums at my provider, I came to find, that they have been having problems with the jabber server. So, after looking for a new transport server for a few minutes, I found one.

So now I am logged on to my Jabber server using MSN as my chat, inside iChat. This makes me somewhat happy.

It's not like I don't like the MSN Messenger. Its just ugly. The thing sticks out like a sore thumb and doesn't flooooow well with the style of the Mac. iChat is so much nicer to look at. It has the brush finish and the chat window itself has a comic style bubbles for what was said. How cool is that!

Vista

I was reading Dave's blog at Blogography.com and he was talking about windows and the terrible Critical Updates that they make every one of their millions of customers do. Well this got me thinking of the new version of Windows. Windows Vista is what they are calling it. So i went to the Windows Vista site and found the following paragraph. My added comments are in Green.

Bringing clarity to your world. Right!

Today we live in a world of more information, more ways to communicate, more things to do. There is more you can do and even more you can discover.

Every day, millions of people around the globe rely on the Windows PC to manage poorly at that their increasingly digital lives. While the familiar tools for managing digital information are powerful, today's world requires more. Like an Apple Macintosh

In today's digital world, you want the PC to adapt to you, so you can cut thru the clutter and focus on what's important to you. So instead of buying the upgrade to find that you still need to upgrade your machine. Just buy a Mac.

Mecca

There is a place in a near by mall. A place where all different thinking people meet. This place. This place is the Apple Store. The Wife and I made a trek to the mall for a gift certificate for a co-worker of hers. While we were there we went to the Apple Store. It was so kick ass. They have every damn thing you would ever want for you Mac or iPod. The reason I wanted to go there was to get answers. I wanted to know if I could upgrade the normal CD-Rom to a combo drive. The guy behind the "bar" said that I would have to secure this service some place outside there domain. I've been priceing drives on ebay and other places. The cheapest I've found has been eighty nine dollars on ebay. While this is a great deal, it also means that i will have to be the one to open the book and do the install myself.

While we were there The Boy and The Wife killed the time by playing on some machines that were loaded with children's games. The Boy had a great time. He played some detective game that had him matching objects. It was neat to see him using a mouse. At first he would just rotate the mouse in a circle. But as The Wife and I showed him he caught on quick. I just hope he doesn't grow up a techie kid. Computers and console games are great. But to many kids make it their life.

As they played the games I listened to a couple lectures on using iTunes and Garage Band. I never knew you could do so much with garage band. That is one handy program. The person that was conducting the lecture used a keyboard to enter custom notes. Which, after they are in there you can manipulate any way you want. Add notes, take some away, change pitch, it doesn't matter. I was so stoked to see that happen it makes me want a midi keyboard. I could become the next Moby. Just with even less talent than he.

Another thing I learned while sitting and listening was, don't ever talk to anyone. There was a guy sitting with his nice Powerbook doing updates. Apperently he needed to tell me why he was doing this. Like i cared. But all the same, he told me. He seemed to be having bad luck with his PB and that if they didn't have it fixed he was going to demand a replacement. He has had it in 3 times now with no luck. He was mad, grrrr, you could see it in his crazy eyes. I guess that could be a perk of having the Apple Protection Plan. I'll have to remember that when I purchase the upgrade.

Fast Food

I eat at Taco Bell almost religiously. I love it, I think it's the best fast food there is. In fact i like it so much that i eat it damn near everyday. There isn't a week that i don't eat there at least twice. Well today, I went there for lunch and spent almost 20 minutes for my food to appear. Don't get me wrong, the geriatric employees that maintain the joint during the day seem to do a good job. But here lately it has gotten worse. Much worse. I should have known that it was going to get bad when the cotton head started to bring my "to go" order on a try. I tell her ever freaking time, IT'S TO GO! i would like to say "IT'S TO GO YOU OLD BAG! NOW GET IT RIGHT OR IM COMING OVER THE COUNTER TO BEAT THE LIVING HELL OUT OF YOU!" But since i am a mild mannered regular joe by day and kick ass super hero by night i don't. It has gotten so bad that i think i am going to skip going in (i don't mind the walk). To going through the drive-thru.

What should we do with the old if they can't seem to handle the strenuous work at a fast food joint? Soylent Green anyone?

Damn Skippy!

I love Ebay! After having my iBook for close to 3 months without a battery power source, I have gotten one. Normally these batteries cost 129 bucks. I got this one off Ebay for a low low cost of 34.00 with shipping. Im so stoked. I felt so tied down because I couldn't move with it having to be powered by the adapter. So now I am mobile. Watch out Kidd Coffee.

While I'm on the subject of my iBook. If any of my apple using reader know of where I can get some free mp3 editing software I would like to hear from you. I am looking for a way to cut a mp3 into a ringtone. Meaning, I want to take a song. Select a part of said song. And save it as a mp3 ringtone. In the windows world this can be acomplished with Audacity. But for a Mac, I have no ideal.

Durable

Question: What happens when a wireless notebook mouse is dropped way to many times?

Answer: Just the same as everything else. It eventually breaks.

Just as my old Logitech wireless notebook mouse did last night. This thing has gone thru hell. Its been dropped more times than anything i know of. Its been thru soda floods, food spills, Thrown at an animal but missed and hit the wall instead. It has outlasted most mice I have owned, wire or wireless. So today I went mouse shopping. Talk about a selection. There was mice there with more buttons than my tivo remote. Being that I was doing this on my lunch break, I didn't have time to browse in depth. So I decided on the upgraded model of what I had before.

There are a few major differences between the former and the new. The first main difference is the battery life. The old one I would have to replace the batteries every 2 months. In the new one, it boasts a 1 year battery life. How much of this is true, I don't know. But I marked the batteries to find out. Instead of a on/off switch they they had, they built in a place in which you can place the USB dongle. which also turns off the mouse and broadcasts a signal in the 2.4GHZ range.

And something that stands out is the Optical part. Instead of the usual red. They use a infrared LED. The wheel mouse is really cool too. Along with the third button and normal scroll. It also has a horizontal scroll, which can also be programed to do a few other things.The shape is the same so i didn't have to get used to a new hand position. it does have the quickness that comes with a new mouse so i have to watch my middle finger. It tends to get heavy.

God and the president

There is a song that has been in my head all day today. It's by Bright Eyes and it could be my favorite song right now. Go and check it out at iTunes.

"When The President Talks To God"

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s' rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it

I doubt it

You can view a live preformance here courtesy of iFilm

Pussys 2

Well Jill was found last night. I was talking to my neighbor about how she was missing, and if she was gone any longer I was going to us a new dog. Well he had to go and ruin it by telling me that his dog has been going crazy at the base of his shed. And that Jill my be in fact under there. So Little man and I when to his shed and called her name and coxed her out. She came out of the hole with dust and cobwebs all in her hair and whiskers. She looked as if she had been in there since she escaped. Maybe she was playing hide and seek with me and I never new it. But all the same she is home. Damn! I was looking forward to my Pug.

Pussys

I was visited today by a kitty. I love cats. This cat is a look alike to my old cat Max. The only difference between the two was that max was better kept and a slight coloring difference. Well this morning I left the house to find "baby" that is what the owner calls her, sitting by my car. This in its self was cool. normally this cat runs from me when I approach it. But today she just sat there looking at me with a glare that said, "whats up". I had to work into petting her but after a few strokes on the top of her head she was into it quick. She was soon touching noses with me and meowing. I felt special.

My cat Jill escaped last night. While letting in my dog Lucy she ran out the door. She isn't an outdoor cat she mostly stays in due to the fact she has not been fixed yet and I really don't want kittens. So hopefully she guards her carnal treasure and stays a sweet little girl.

Coffee

Do you drink coffee? I do. In fact i'm a "coffee snob" When my wife and I began to date she would offer me a cup of coffee. She would bring me a cup of Folgers Instant Crystals. This was not acceptable. It took me a little over a month of that swill that I bought her a bean grinder and some beans. It took her awhile to get used to it. Tasting coffee and all. But eventually she switched to the grind a brew system. That is how we now make our coffee every morning. Wake up, grind the beans, brew the coffee. I totally ruined her for coffee forever. She cant even think of how she could drink the other.

For a wedding present someone gave us a kick ass cuisinart coffee bean grinder. This thing rocks! all you have to do is select the amount of coffee you want and press a button. It grinds the beans to the correct size and amount. Drops the coffee into a container so you can pour it into the filter and brew. If it got any easier it would brew the coffee for ya. Which I know they have grind a brew makers. But that is a tad bit lazy.

So the burning question is. How does Rob, the coffee snob, take his coffee? Well ill tell ya, I take my coffee like the little guy in the movie Airplane takes his coffee. Like his women, Hot and Black. No sugar, no creamer, NOTHING! Only time I take stuff in my coffee is when I go into a shop like Bigbucks or Kidd Coffee. And I prefer Kidd Coffee over the other. They just have more flavorful coffee.

So how do you take your coffee? Do you even drink coffee? Are you a coffee snob? Do you drink Bigbucks coffee? What is the meaning of life? Can you find the fish in the above picture?

CornHole

This weekend was a good one. On saturday we were invited to the wifes sisters house for some beer, dogs off the grill and some cornhole. It was good times. The wife was partnered up with her sisters boyfriend, who, if you followed wrestling at all would think he is the Undertaker. He looks just like the guy. I was teamed up with his girlfriend who if you watched Baywatch would think she looks like no one Pam Anderson on the show. My Wife and her mate kicked everyone's ass that day! they took it home with no problems. I think my wife has a little redneck in her. She was just to good at throwing those bags.

For those of you, my readers, the whole 3 that I have, who don't know what cornhole is. Cornhole is not a crazy sex term that redneck cops like to use when talking of sodomizing prisoners. Cornhole is a game similar to horseshoes. Basically, you throw four beanbags from about forty feet away and try to make them into a hole the size of the bag which is cut into a board approximately 3'x2' sitting at a 45 degree angle. Scoring is 3 points for making it in the hole, and 1 point for landing on the board. If your opponent makes points, your points are off set by his points. So if player one makes 1 in the hole and 2 on the board (that's 5 points). And player 2 makes 3 on the board but none in the hole. Then the total score for player one is 2 points. Its good times especially if you have some beers in ya.

Sunday was basically just like Saturday, but only at my sisters house. The Boy became a tadpole that day also. My sister has a pool in her back yard and we brought his swimming cloths. This was his first time in a pool and he had a blast. When it was time to go he almost didn't want to come. He was so into kicking his legs to move from one end to the other in his doughnut and arm floats he didn't' want to leave. So it looks like auntie Ninny is going to become a frequent stop on the summer days.

***I had to edit the above because the sister thought i was calling her ugly, which i was not. But all the same.***

Crazy

What is it about peeling skin that makes women go nuts. I received a very bad sunburn on my honeymoon. Now, its starting to peel. Every woman i've told has asked me if I would let them peel off my skin. Whats with this? I don't see any reason this would bring joy. But each and every one has gotten a big smile on their faces and practically attacked me to just peel a bit of my dry, flaky skin. Same goes for zits. Tell a woman you have a zit on your back, arm or any other place on your body. They will go nuts! "let me pop it PLEASE!" they will say. Almost trying to buy your pimple to pop. That could be a great Ebay auction. Winner gets to pop all the zits on my back and various other parts of my body. A very pimply guy could clean up if he did it per pimple.

Now before you go and say, Rob, your a married man now and you shouldn't be letting women, other than your wife peel your skin. I know. And I haven't, I just tease the other women to remind them that I am not to be had. So that way they can go on through their day dreaming of me. Its just a step in my plan to rule the world. I'm going off my wifes reaction to my peeling flesh here. But, while she was getting her flesh fix pulling off my dry, damaged skin. She had a slight smile on her face. One that said yes, yes, this is so good. Almost like if she was to get a large size to peel, she may orgasm.

So then what is it? Is it a joy of taking a piece of man. Kinda like pulling him apart in a knit sweater kind of way? As if you were to get that one good piece of skin and then the whole man will fall apart. I'm not sure. But I find this very interesting as I have yet to find joy in the act of peeling me or popping a pimple.

Holy Crap

The hosting company I use to run this fine site, Dreamhost, has again done it. First they doubled everyones disk space and bandwidth. Then they made one click installs for wordpress, phpBB Forums, and MediaWiki Wiki for all its customers. Now, in a surprise to me, they have started "growing" their shared hosting plans.

basically, every week depending which plan your on, your quotas will grow. So say if your on the cheapest plan, you start your service with a already whopping 2400MB of disk space and a monthly bandwidth of 120GB. Every week after that your quotas will grow. How much you might ask? For a level one shared hosting plan its 20MB disk space and 1GB bandwidth each week. Thats right, each week! Does any other hosting company out there do this. I don't think so.

So if your looking to change hosts or even looking for one, this baby is your best buy. Check out Dreamhost and make your hosting dreams come true. Oh and they also have a 97 day money back guarantee. So you have nothing to loose! go on Sign up now!

Bang Zoom!

Well where back home. No matter how nice the place is, its always nice to be home. I have to let you all know that my wife, if ever in need of a job, could be a truck drive. Since i didn't sleep for the past two nights i had a problem of keeping my eyes open on the road. She in her infinite love decided that she was going to drive home. I started out for the first leg of the trip, so we had 2 stops. So i would drive first and she would go next and so on. well she took over on her fist leg and kept it going. I kept asking if she wanted to stop but not for her. She is the driving machine!

So can anyone tell me why the hell my ankle is swollen like a grapefruit? I have no ideal why it is, but it is. I still have a bad burn on my ankle, but in all my burns its never gotten like this. It's also very sore. just barely touch it and it hurts. Oh well, I'm sure it will get better soon.

Tales Lobster Boy and Nurse Girl

Yesterday I think I received a bit to much sun. When we went to the pool I smeared myself with SPF 8 Sunblock. But this I think just slowed the cooking process all together. I still received a burn that is as red as a cherry. I have slathered aloe vera gel on all the burns which include my legs and chest. Luckily I didn't turn over otherwise I would be a total mess. At least I can sit or lay down. This morning I woke up to find just how bad my burn was. When I stand up it feels like I am stretching my entire left leg. I think I slow burned so bad that I actually cooked my muscles and veins. Not only does the burned skin hurt against my cloths, it also hurts when I walk. So needless to say I have been kept up in the room all day. I was praying for rain so we could go places without having to dodge the sunshine. I could burst into flames at any given moment in direct sunlight.

The bride has been great though. Even though I ruined the last day of our honeymoon she has found the best in it. She loves to read so she has been reading and relaxing just like she wanted to do. Right now she is reading a book from James Patterson called Honeymoon. Fitting huh? She keeps feeding me Advil to take the pain away in my legs. But she has been trying to get me to take a Vicodin, the ache is bad, but not that bad.

Well tomorrow is going to be the driving day. We plan on taking off from here as early as possible. Say around 9 or earlier in the morning.