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not so happy with him.I"m not an IT guy by anymeans, but I do know how to read my virus software (which yes was a bit out of date and the reason this happened) and can find the files and start picking the bits of the virus out of my pc.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.

2009 year end report

Wow! 2009 came and went so fast that my head is still shaking like a dashboard bobble doll.

The last couple of months I've not been very active with my blog. I've just had a lot on the proverbial plate and haven't really had an urge to write about things until they had gotten further along.

Where to start? My ex violated our parenting plan and moved them out of the school district. A big No No. Matter of fact she moved them so far out that it now is 40 miles one way to pick them up.

Moving is just one of the many violations. I won't go into them, but if you're divorced then I'm sure that you know all the ins and outs.

Skipping ahead. My kids are now sick of the mom and her BS. They tell me and her that they want to live with dad. Initially that goes interesting with their mom. She loses her temper with my son and proceeds to yell at him that "there are still plenty of moving boxes for you to start packing your shit into".

Real nice yeah?

So after much discussion with an attorney it's pretty much been placed on the back burner on a low simmer. The former Mrs. is now raising a stink about it and doing everything she can to continue to push the boundaries of the spirit of the parenting plan.

My attorney has a plan, and the more I think about it I wonder if its a good idea. He states that a court doesn't care what the kids want. They will side with mom for the reason that this is where they currently are and custody doesn't need to change just because mom is having a bit of bad luck.

Bad Luck my arse!! She is flat out making stupid mistakes and my kids are paying for it. I've gone to far with this one.

Back to the topic at hand. The end of the year review.

Well it's been a roller coaster year. Reconciling with the folks (mom is narcissist and we cut them off for a almost 2 years) refinanced our condo for a lower interest rate and got out from our PMI. Joined up with a great group of folks, the Seattle Steamrats, a local steampunk group. Sold my previous ride (see the Bronze Bitch files) and purchased a new one (see the end of the road).

The holidays almost went over without a hitch.

On Christmas morning the parents and grandparents came to our place for the morning. The festivities started on the front landing of our condo when my grandfather fell. So we finally got him off the ground and in the house and kept an eye on him for about 2 hours and finally had to call paramedics. He hasn't come home from the hospital and won't be. Grandma can't take care of him and the fall triggered some other things. He will be headed to a live in home once he's able to leave the hospital.

Lastly, there are the car repairs. Jake (the new to me Porsche 944) needed a few things when I bought him that I was aware of. A clutch and engine mounts. Well then 3 weeks later came the unexpected: Jake hemorrhaged fluids all over my parking space at the condo. Damn. So after 2 weeks in the shop it will be ready tonite. The first issue was the valve cover gasket and all the pulley and crank seals that were leaking. They found the waterpump leaking.

Once it was back together and the system was re-pressurized it burst a hose and the radiator. Fortunately the shop is only charging for the parts and not the labour since they had it way longer than they or I intended. So the Jake has now cost $6k in repairs alone. Last nite I asked my father in law if he would discuss the purchase price. I don't think he realised that it was going to take so much work. We'll see where that goes.

So now you're wondering, Jake? Where did that name come from? Well I'm glad you asked. Ever see the movie Sixteen Candles? A John Hughes film. One the secondary characters is named Jake Ryan. He drives a red Porsche 944. I name all my cars and this just seemed logical.

Let's see where was I? Been a few days since I could write on here. The pc has had some issues. My wife's work broke our internet connection on the pc. Her office is moving next week and there is no room for the Paisley at the new place so she has to work from home for two days next week. Well when she tried to login to the VPN is crashed our connection. Thankfully there is the restore option.

We have talked to so many peeps that work in tech support that are totally stumped that all their suggestions are not working. Well good on my lovely Paisley for suggesting that we just do the system restore. So finally tonite after going through many of the pc voodoo rituals and did the restore and BAM!! we have a connection again.

The weird twist is that this whole time according to a Communist-Cast our modem was working every time they pinged it, but every time we tried to get on we were getting an error message stating the server could not be found.

Well I'm rambling again. On to the new year. I have two resolutions. Make myself more available to help friends and family out and revamp my blog.

Page layout is the mission and more post's. There will be a Cruisin' With Jake segment to show off weekend outings and to report on how he's holding up now that we've sunk $6k into the lil bastard to get him healthy.

So Happy New Year and look for most postings and a spiffier looking page.

Good Karma October

So I was thinking the other day that October really has been a great month.

Sure the weather has turned and I'm getting ready to be fairly non-existant for the winter. I can't stand cold weather to be honest. Sure I can do something about it, but that is another post for another time.

Back to the topic at hand. The weather has turned and we've just rolled our good time pieces back an hour over the weekend, and of course trouble with the former Mrs. mother of my kids, but why let little things like that stop me from seeing the good side.

I finally sold my massage table. It was time to part ways. I haven't been doing much massage work in the last few years so I figure that it should finally go to someone that was going to put it to use. The good is that it's no longer taking up space in my place and I've gained a little extra money.

The big one: The Bronze Bitch went away. This was a hard decision as well, but when it came down to it I had no problem seeing it leave. It's in good hands. The buyer will get at least 50,000 miles out of it. Lets face it, most BMW engines are good for about 300k before they need to be replaced and this one is certainly no exception. The good side of this is that I got almost my asking price (short by $300 from what I asked) and now I have the cash for the Porsche that my father in law has offered to me (which has under 200k on it and is older than the BMW I just sold).

One of the last photos of the "Bronze Bitch" I'll ever take

Many little things have come about to make it an especially good month. First off my wonderful wife took me to see Kevin Smith speak at the Benaroya Hall. We got an extra helping of Lunchbox and gift of gab when he blew off his handler and went 45 minutes over his alloted time. He is amazing to listen to. I've read two of his books and watched the first two DVD's with his tour talks. I never get bored of him.

The "small" guy on stage is Kevin Smith......Lunchbox himself.

The nite of my actual birthday was great as well. Not expecting my children to be in attendance I had planned a dinner out to a family style Italian restaurant. Just happens that while I was out walking the dog their mom dropped them off at our home. A very nice surprise and they were able to enjoy Bucca di Beppo with us and our neighbour.

The following evening the Paisley came to pick me up at work (we're good carpoolers!) and one of her Facebook friends had a pair of all access club level tickets to the Seattle Sounders MLS playoff match!!! So after 40 minutes of working our way through 4 miles of downtown traffic and then 3 more miles back to the Paisley's office (where we parked for free) we were on our way to Seattle's first futbol playoff as an MLS club!!!

October was finished off with a Halloween party at our other neighbour's (in the house behind our condo) late nite party. There was a keg and beer-pong and loads of hours de vours. Great neighbours and this is the first we've been able to really socialise with them and get to know them since they moved in over the summer.

As I finish this up November is looking pretty promising. Unfortunately you wont find out about this month until December when I do a follow up.

Cheers all from the KTA.

Halloween Favourites 2009

Well I've been behind on Halloween this year and I can only attribute that to possibly having too much in my head and not enough time to execute.

So here are some images and views on some of my fav scary films.

Alien. This will always be at the top of my list. I was 9 when this came out and it wasn't scary in the sense that I went away terrified, but the overall suspense of the film and the waiting to see just what this alien was going to do and to who and how just scared the shit out of me. I can tell you that my favourite combination is horror and space/science fiction.
Trick r Treat. This was a pretty cool movie. Not all hack and slash but a fair bit of it. This one came out last year and I don't know how I missed this one. It takes a Tales From the Crypt/Creepshow approach in the fact that there are four story lines going on in this film and they all arc together in the end. The key to the film is the very opening sequence. In the first 5 minutes you have your first kill. Not surprising is Britt McKillip in a role suited to her now typecasted image. Here she is playing an emotionless little bitch and pulling it off successfully. Then there is Ana Paquin......not sure what her decision was to do this film, but I can say that I can see why she is took the lead role for TrueBlood. This one is a must see.
Final Destination 2. This is my fav of the series. No I haven't seen number 4. Not sure I want to but I may have to in order to see how far the producers can fling that steaming pile. The body count isn't any higher than the first but I think the deaths were a little more creative and I can see some of them actually happening under the right circumstances. Definitely the best of the first three.
Rear Window. Alfred Hitchcock. Enough said. Voyeurism taken to a new level. Hitchcock just has a way of taking the everyday and making it into something suspenseful. One of my fav Hitchcock films. This one was later remade with Shia Lebuef as Disturbia. See the original instead.
Dial M For Murder. I actually don't recall a lot from this one since it has been a few years since I saw it last. The premise is great. Again, Alfred Hitchcock. Nuff said. Here a man plans to kill his wife and hires a man with a rather seedy reputation to do the job and things go wrong when the man's blackmail attempts backfire and the hired hitman is killed. This was later remade with Michael Douglas and Gweneth Paltrow as A Perfect Murder. See the original.
An American Werewolf in Paris. First off I have to say that after all the years it took to make a follow up to An American Werewolf In London that I find it hard to believe this was the best that anyone could come up with. Julie Delpy was a nice touch to the film and I do like the backstory involving her family. The special effects are so much better over the original. In the end I do like this one. There are too few werewolf films out there and this one is pretty cool compared to say Silver Bullet which was just a big steamy pile of crap. This film has had the potential to spawn more American Werewolf films, but I'm glad it hasn't.
Twilight Zone The Movie. I don't consider this to be a horror or even a suspense film, but there are elements to it that are just fitting for this time of year. For those movie geeks out there you should take notice that John Landis wrote and directed the first story starring Vic Morrow and has cleverly placed a line in the film with reference to his earlier film, Animal House. My favourite of the stories in this film is the last one with John Lithgow on the airplane being torn apart mid air by some kind of demon. This role was originally played by William Shatner in the original tv series.

Another thing that I really enjoyed in this film was the introductory with Dan Akroyd and Albert Brooks talking about the Twilight Zone series and reminiscing about the one with Burgess Meredith only to have the movie narrated by Burgess Meredith. A must see and great anytime of year really.
The Village. This is one of M Night Shyamalan's best films. Let's face it folks his last two films were no better than rotting road apples. I loved the suspense of not knowing what the creature was for a good portion of the film and not seeing this creature for sometime either. I like the darker overtone this one had compared to his earlier films. A must see for suspense freaks.
Wrong Turn. This was just a plain weird and creepy film. In not sure of the reality of in-breeders and their behaviour in general, but this film sure plays on the myth pretty well. This is a pretty cool hack and slash and make up is pretty good. Amusing at least once. I recently saw the second one and it really paled compared to the first. Not even Henry Rollins was able to salvage the second.
White Noise. This one started out a little slow in my opinion. It did pick up a and I found it pretty intriguing. I'm not sure how much of this is based on reality or if there's even been a study done on white noise, but this film did make my skin crawl like a toddler on a dirty floor.
The Host. I was first introduced to this film back in 2007 while working on our film, The Book of Zombie. I do like this one and I like that it's great example of an new generation films coming out of foreign countries. It's a bit of Jaws with a creature that looks like something from Skywalker ranch. Not very suspensful, but still another great creature film with a backstory that's been done before.

I had another one, but I had it on last years list so I will spare you all. There are so many great horror, suspense films out there and I encourage everyone to branch out and watch as many as possible. No matter how cheesy and ridiculous they may seem, they are in a class all their own and offer something for everyone.

Happy Halloween.