FuzzyUnicorn's Randomation Blog

We come home from dinner last night, and as we come around the corner just before my house, we see a ton of cops in the street stopping traffic. The cop stops us, and I'm sitting there wondering if there was an accident in front of our house. I look over at the house, and see an orange truck in my driveway. Then I realize the truck is at a 45 degree angle, with it's wheels against my bedroom wall. There is a tow truck yanking on the orange truck, trying to dislodge it from what's left of my A/C unit.

I lean my head out the window and tell the officer in the middle of the street, "Ummm..... that's my house!" He says, "Oh good, we've been trying to figure out how to get a hold of you."

I pull in front of the house across the street and talk to the officer. Somehow the guy pulled a 90 degree turn in front of the house, went through my chain-link fence, across the driveway, over the A/C, and up into the bedroom wall. They're not sure if he was drunk yet! He went to the hospital before the cops got there, so they didn't have a chance to question him.

They did get all of his info, and said that his insurance should cover everything. If not, we do have homeowners insurance, but I'm sure they'll raise the rates if we have to use it.

What's left of our A/C. And it's the middle of August in Arizona.

Amber's side of the bed. A nice 6 inch window to the outside!

My side. Not quite as big, but still some good size cracks, and at least one broken stud.

And the craziest thing: a few weeks ago, a storm ripped one of my trees out of the ground, and threw it across the driveway. If I hadn't cut it up and moved it, it would probably have stopped the dude, or at least slowed him enough to keep him from hitting the house.

We went to the Renaissance Faire a few weeks ago, and AM wanted me to make her a witch t-shirt to wear. She had several ideas, but settled on a witch being burned at the stake, with the quote "We remember the burning times" around it. OK, not at all funny, but that's what she wanted. I prefer my t-shirts to be funny or mocking.
She wanted an old woodblock print for the picture, so I searched around and found a few candidates. One of the ones she didn't choose was a woman being burned with a crowd gathered around, and a puritan looking guard holding them back. I decided I wanted to use this design to make my own shirt, but I need to decide what quote to put under it.

Mommy, look a church barbecue!
Look, the Christians are having another barbecue
The Traditional Christian Barbecue
Witch, it's what's for dinner
"Mommy, a church barbecue, can we go?" "Yes son, I think we're next"

Any other ideas? Post a comment.

Am's mom came to visit this week, and after a couple of days of trying to shop with the boys running around, they decided that they needed to bring me to watch them while the girls shopped.

We went up to prescott, and the while the girls shopped for clothes at Ross, me and the boys wandered up and down the stip mall. In target, I saw their ad for 512mb flash drives for $9.99. So I drag the boys to the electronic section, but of course they are all out of the ones that are on sale. They did have a pretty cool bracelet usb drive, but it was only 256 meg. It was like a black rubber arm band, and the clasp part was the usb plug.

Next we went to the Petco, and they were having an adopt a dog sale. It must have been the humane society, but I didn't see any indication of that. But all of the dogs were kind of "used" looking. The boys went to pet one of them, and they said "oh, don't let them put their fingers near him, he bites, he doesn't like kids" Then they invited us to come pet a nicer dog. As we were petting him, I noticed he only had one eye. EZ said "Dad, this dog only gots one eye! That's Cool!!!" The lady started cracking up and said only a boy would think that.

As we walked by Officemax, I saw a bunch of flyers out front. They didn't have any great deals, but they did have a 50 pack of dvds or 75 pack of cds for $9.99. I've been meaning to make some videos of the boys for relatives, so I decided to pick up a pack of dvds. I also decided to see if they had any flash drives for cheap. They were all in the $50 range though, and that was mostly for 256 or 512mb ones. I found the dvd section, but none were marked $9.99, so I had to compare skus on the flyer to the shelves. Finally I figured out it was the Memorex ones that were on sale. Not bad, I usually get the Great Quality ones at Frys, and let me tell you, that name is a misnomer. Memorex are usually $30, and every disc in the pack works, unlike GQ.

After another hour or two, the girls were finally done with Ross. We went to the mall, and the boys and I played at the play area while the girls shopped for another 2 hours. I'm surprised the mall security guys didn't think I was some sort of weirdo, watching the little kids play for hours at a time.

After lunch and Costco, we finally get to the last store. Grandma's favorite, K-Mart. As bad as the name sounds, this store was 100 times worse. We go in and get a shopping cart for the boys to ride in, and every single one is so dirty, I didn't even want to touch it, let alone put the boys in it. I dig through to get the cleanest one, and we wander the store for an hour or so while the girls look at clothes. We go the the electronics section so EZ can play whatever demo video game they have out. It's a really dirty, beat up gameboy advance, with mario pinball.

I wander over to the usb drive case, and see a 1gig drive on sale for $14.99. The 128mb one in the same brand is $20, so that's a pretty good deal. And it's a Memorex, not some generic junk. So I buy it, and I'm reading the package while we wait for the girls to finish trying on the clothes (more like start trying on the clothes). Under system requirements, it says Windows XP, NT, 98SE as usual. Then a little lower, Mac OS 8.6 and above, and to my surprise Linux 2.4.x. Memorex actually knows what Linux is!!! And they know enough about it to know you need a 2.4.x kernel to use usb.

Reading the package a little more, I see that the drive comes with a couple of applications that are set up to be run off the drive. One of those applications is Mozilla Thunderbird! So not only does Memorex know about Linux, but they're also helping to spread Thunderbird. Granted, all of the applications are the Win32 versions, but still, every little bit of press helps.

Soon I would like to see them putting a full distro on the drive, so you can just buy it, boot from the usb drive, and test out a new OS. It wouldn't be that hard, I put PClinuxOS on it this morning, and it only took about 10 minutes including the download. If they put a small distro like Puppy or DSL on there, it wouldn't even take up much room. And it wouldn't cost them anything. They could be helping to spread Linux, and at the same time boost the value of their drives over the other companies.

I guess it looks like I'm going to have to start supporting Memorex over the generic stuff I usually buy. I just hope I can find good deals like this every time.

My loyal readers may have noticed a little change on some of my pages. I've decided to implement Google AdSense to make the boys some college money. Well, maybe not. But maybe enough for the down payment on a used minivan. Or lunch at McD's. Actually Google won't even give me any money until I've earned at least $100, so it may be a while before I get anything.

The AdSense rules are kind of funny. I'm not allowed to ask you to click my ads. I can't have arrows pointing at the ads. I can't do anything that would draw attention to the ads and cause you to actually click them. So whatever you do, don't click on the ads. But do click on the firefox button, or go there directly and download it. Help make the web a safer place. I should see if Ubuntu has a referral program too. It's easy enough to use even AM can do it.

F.U.

We knew having two boys we would be visiting the emergency room sometime. Last thursday was the first time for Ez. He and his buddies JJ and Joey were having a playdate at the house. I was at work. My cell phone rings, and it's Am. Ever since the shaken kitty incident, every time she calls I expect her to call freaking out saying someone's going to the emergency room. This time it happened. She was actually calmer than I would expect, but still pretty shaken up. She said JJ and Joey had "ripped" Ez's ear, and Lara was going to take them to the emergency room in cottonwood to get stitched.

I called my boss and told him I had to go, and he said don't bother closing, just lock the door and go. So driving to cottonwood, the whole time I'm thinking "how could they 'rip' his ear? Were the wrestling and pulling on it?"

I get to the emergency room, and there's no parking. Apparently everyone's getting hurt tonight. Once i get in, Am leads me into the nurse's station, where Ez is sitting very calmly. He says "I got some blood on my ear, but the doctor's gonna make it better" He takes off the washcloth and icecube, and I see it's not "ripped" along the seam like I expected, it's "cut" right in the middle through the cartilage. It looks like he was in a knife fight.

From what we could piece together in his story, JJ pushed him over, and he fell and hit his ear against the changing table. He must have hit it just right against the corner, because it was a really smooth clean cut.

After waiting 2 hours in the waiting room, we finally got sent back to the doctor. She was pretty cute, in her mid to late 20's. Ez really liked her. He said "You gonna make me all better?" "You're a very nice doctor, I like you" He kept flirting with her the whole time. He didn't cry once, I couldn't believe how big he was.

She decided he didn't need any stitches, they would just use Dermabond, which is fancy doctor-talk for superglue. She used an entire pen/tube of glue on it, I guess she really didn't want it coming apart.

It's now a week later, and the glue has come off and his ear is splitting a little. Am wanted to go back to the doctor, but I said why don't we just put some more glue on there. She said no way, absolutely not. Then when I got home, she said "why don't we just glue it ourselves?" I reminded her that I had suggested that only a few hours earlier, and she had nearly bit my head off. But now her friend's sister who used to work in a doctor's office suggested it, and it was ok. So we're going to get some glue today, lets see if she actually lets me do it.