Goodbye Zelda Rubinstein

We all recognise her and love her from such films as Sixteen Candles and Poltergiest.

Zelda Rubinstein died yesterday in L.A.

I guess I'll have to make sure my next house wasn't built on an indian burial site.

We'll miss you Zelda

Steampunk Blog

My favourite blogger has started another blog. Roland Hulme at Militant Ginger has just started Steampunk Generation. You will find a link to his blog on the left sidebar or just click here.

What is steampunk?

Glad you asked!

Take today's fun little gadgets and people and place them back in a late 1880's-ish time period and you would have Steampunk. Just take a look at the work of Jules Verne for instance. Read his books and you'll have a better understanding of what steampunk is.

My wife and I joined a local group called the Seattle Steamrats. At first we just started attending the Monday evening get togethers so we could meet other members and get to know them. Some folks come dressed in their period steampunk clothes every week and some do not.

As the Paisley and I continue to add to our wardrobes and participate in the local events held by our group we will post some photos and chat up a bit about the events and fun items.

Here I am last weekend at Gasworks park for a caledar photo shoot organised by a fellow Steamrat member.

Here we have a common Star Wars Jango Fett blaster. This is the before I modified it into a steampunk weapon.

With a little paint and some subtle placement of some bits I added to it and........voila!! One Steam-Fett Blaster.

Well I'm done for now. Please click on Roland's link and enjoy his new blog and if you haven't read him before now please be sure to visit his other blog, Militant Ginger.

So what were your resolutions?

So we all make them and we all break them. That is the nature of New Years resolutions.

I decided that I really would only have three this year. One being of course the stand by "lose weight and eat better" montra.

My other was to make myself more available to others. I started thinking about that becuase I have a friend that is really in a bad way right now. He had a car accident that left his back really out of sorts. This means he hasn't been able to work his regular construction job. He's also working on an addition to his home and that work has ceased as well. He's close to losing his house. I've tried to get any kind of work steered his way to just so he has some kind of money coming in. I recently went and helped him install some insullation in his new garage. I do need to go back and help him finish it up so that we can move to the new upstair bedroom area and get the insullation installed there. Once the insullation is complete then he can get the next inspection done and sheetrock can go in and then he can get a line a credit that will help him and his family through this tight time.

My last one is pretty easy and pretty hard. It's to spend more time writing here. I've been writing here for about two years now. I have to admit there are days where the words just flow and I feel like I've really accomplished something and then there are the other days..................the ones where I sit here and want to write and nothing is happening. No writing. I started really feeling that way about somewhere around last summer.

I really had every intention of posting more musings from my head onto the web for all to see. Most nites after coming home I really don't want to hang out  on a computer after spending all day on one. The other issue is that I would come up with something to write about or read something that I want to comment on and I would not write it down thinking I could remember it and then of course I would.

So hopefully I will be posting on here a minimum of twice a week. It's a big world and there's a lot to share. I hear really funny shit at the office from agents and directs that call in and the *hen-house on the other side of my cubicle.

*note: the "hen-house" is the term that I have given to the row of cubibles on the other side of my department that is filled with mid twenty something single women that fawn over cutesy women things and man-bash.*

So there it is. My three resolutions. I know we're 3 weeks into the new year, but why rush the topic? After all folks need some time to put their resolutions into place and start doing them and get commited to them.

So, how are you doing on your resolutions?

2010: The year we hemmorage money

Wow!!! So far 2010 is just flying by!! I realise of course that time moves at the same time that it always, but in figurative manner this month is going by pretty quickly.

It's also been a bit expensive so far as well.

First there was recovering from the shock of having the new car in the shop. It's new to me, but lets face it, a 24 year old car is like an 83 year old human. Things start leaking. such was the case with Jake. For those new readers and the ones that didn't pay attention Jake is a 1986 Porsche 944. So far he has cost me $6000 in repairs and I technically haven't paid my father in law for it yet.

My father in law took it surprisingly well when  I suggested/asked that we negotiate the sale price. He actually felt bad since he didn't realise that poor little Jake needed so much work. Well mechanically that is. There is the body and paint. One fender does have a dimple and the paint is fading after 24 years. This was expense number one.

Now the second expense is our home PC. Seems my 14 year old son has discovered the world of internet pornography. As a man I understand that normal males will tend to wander to such sites at some point in their lives. Hey, I have. The problem lies in two things: he did it from our PC and he went to a site that couldn't be trusted. Yes there are trust worthy adult sites out there. The only way to equate it would be a street corner hooker or a high priced escort service.

So somewhere in his virtual womanising my son managed to pick up a trojan worm. Now I'm not so happy with him.I"m not an IT guy by anymeans, but I do know how to read my virus software (which yes was a bit out of date and the reason this happened) and can find the files and start picking the bits of the virus out of my pc. Of course that means there are now gaps in the information for the os and things are considerably slower and not working right. This has rendered my mozilla browser useless.

The upside is that we had budgeted for a new laptop at the end of the month. Our neighbour found a great deal on an HP. We got some free upgrades and reduced price on additional software and peripheral pieces. The first two items are expected to arrive by tomorrow or Saturday and the actual laptop should ship by next Monday or Tuesday.

As for the old desktop...........well it's going to be stripped and hardware replaced and then the os will be reinstalled and we'll give it to the kids to take to their mom's house. This way they will have something that was made in this century and it will now have safety's to keep the young man from surfing where he shouldnt.