Mindless Juices

The 'Canes began their comeback last night. After taking the Cananandandiens to OT, Eric Staal scored his first playoff goal and won the game bringing us back into the series. Montreal still leads 2 to 1 in the series and the next game is in Montreal, but Sunday, we'll be coming home. We found our feet. We found our goalie. Now, we just need to find our sticks. The 'Canes have not been handling the puck well. Montreal has excelled in this area and is cutting off passing lanes left & right. Luckily, despite our errors, Cam Ward (only 22 years of age) seems to be starting a hot streak just in time for a cold streak from Martin Gerber. Last hockey paragraph: I called the tieing goal. I told my wife that Rod Brind'Amour would either score the next goal or have an assist. The captain has a certain timing about him. While he has occasional goals/assists, he's the one that makes things happen after long periods of getting beat on, particularly if the other team has the lead for a long time or is scoring a lot. Roddy, in truest cpatain style, always leads the comeback. As we were down for a while and losing the series while playing on "foreign" ice, I just knew Roddy would find the back of the net. In other news, I finished my dental hygiene "volunteering." My next door neighbor, Kim, is studying to become a hygienist. She needed clients to practice and test on. She had a minimum number required to pass. I gladly volunteered. It's a good deal and a way to help out a friend and neighbor. So, my teeth are free of plaque (Kim is VERY good and gentle), freshly polished and coated with flouride. I received numerous compliments, but also stern finger shaking for not flossing. I hate flossing. I feel like it doesn't do anything and it takes too long. Sometimes I do it wrong and I hurt myself. There's no need for me to hurt myself.

I fixed my car today. Well, I fixed the speaker that wasn't sounding right on the passenger side. It did turn out to be a loose connection. It likely came loose on the "final" door slam before Mike and I hit the road after installing the rear speakers. It was a simple enough fix and now my car sounds significantly better. Seriously, what a difference 25% of your sound makes... hehe. So, a while back, when I was working at Circuit City, I asked one of the Road Shop guys which would you buy first if you could only buy one or the other: Speakers or a new head unit? The head unit (a.k.a. - "deck") seemed to be the consensus. Now, after installing new speakers on a factory head unit, I can tell you that there is NO WAY a head unit is the way to go, especially if you can increase the size of your speakers. For example, in the 1995 Civic, there are 4 1/4" speakers in the car from the factory. However, when you replace them with aftermarket, you install 5 1/2" speakers. This requires some minor modifications to your car, but all mods are hidden beneath speaker covers, so they don't even have to look all that pretty. That extra inch and a quarter of cone combined with separate tweeters built-in the Infinity speakers made a HUGE difference in both power and quality of sound using just my factory deck. Now, here's the important part: these speakers were in Sabrina's Integra and sounded just as good on an after market head unit with more power. In fact, I would be hard pressed to hear the difference between the two. In fact, the only difference I can tell is that "too loud" simply comes earlier on the volume scale of the after market head unit. Based on what I know about sound and electronics, as long as the "too loud" point is at 75% colume or below, you have sufficient power to make you happy while maintaining good quality. You hit "too loud" around 50% on the after market deck... and about 75% on the factory deck. So, the moral of the story: If you want to upgrade your mobile sound system, and care about SOUND, not features, then upgrade speakers first. Unless you have a desire for a CD player or Aux In, and even then, go cheap and put more money into getting better speakers. The only other features regarding a deck revolve mainly around amps. Many modern after market decks offer more/better tone control and various crossover and EQ settings. However, all of this means nothing if you don't have speakers with good frequency response and separate tweeters and woofers (and subs, if applicable). Wow, it sounds like I know a thing or two about sound, doesn't it? I don't, but I still think I might be smarter than the average bear. So, if you're an average bear buying mobile stereo equipment, listen to me.

So, I woke up Saturday morning with a bit of a mission. I headed downstairs to our hallway. I removed the last bit of carpet and pulled up the vinyl flooring. I then spent hours scraping the glue off as well as scraping the drips and drops our plaster and painting people dripped and dropped when they were building our house. I made the floor as smooth as possible. I even tried to fill the crack in the concrete. It's a minor crack and more aesthetically unpleasing than anything. However, the stuff I tried to use is just crappy. It must be designed for bigger cracks because I could barely get the stuff to go in the crack. And it stuck more to the plastic tube from which it was being dispensed than the concrete. The stuff would have been better in a tub so as to be applied like spackle... it would have saved us the trouble of buying a tube gun thingy. Anyway, after lots of scraping and a little filling, I started sealing. I pulled out the sealer and, although warned, was still taken aback by the strong smell. I mixed it well and began applying it. Mind you, there are two "closets" in which I had to apply this stuff. ALso, keep in mind that, in order to minimize impact to us, I started at the end of the hallway and had to shut the bonus room door very early on in the process (or else leave the house wide open for far too many hours). With that door shut, I had no cross breeze. Shortly thereafter, I had to shut the garage door for similar reasons. Shortly thereafter, I believe I got a buzz and even though I went outside for a good 10 minutes taking deep breathes and trying to clear myself of this unintentional huffing, I believe I ended up getting a little high. Now, I only say this because I woke up on Sunday with a KILLER headache. Now, I've NEVER had a hangover, but I imagine that's what it's like. I have never been more miserable from just a headache. It seemed only time made it go away. So, my advice, if sealing concrete, get a fan or two and wear an odor minimizing type mask. Meanwhile, the hallway is completely ready for Pergo. It is still backordered, so we're waiting impatiently. The hallway looks 10 times better than it did. It smells "better" too, if you prefer paint thinner to kitty litter. I do. I'm glad I listened to my friends who told me to seal the concrete. My last project this weekend was to install the Infinity speakers that we took out of Miles into my Civic. The front ones went in pretty easy. I already had a wiring harness for them and I just needed to cut out the plastic that prevented the Infinity speakers from fitting. THe back ones posed more of a challenge. I had bought the wrong wiring harness for those, so I needed to exchange them and I needed to drill new hole and, consequently, I needed new screws and nuts to secure the speakers. I went to Best Buy and Home Depot and my friend Mike came with me and helped install the second pair. Everything sounded good until, on the way home, we heard a buzzing come from the passenger front speaker. I dropped Mike home and checked it out briefly when I got home. I was hoping it was just a weird vibration, but it's not. It's either the speaker or the connections. If it's the connections, I'll be just fine. I can fix those. If it's the speaker, that will totally suck. But, man, it's nice to have tunes in my car again.

So, I only today realized I was missing a Recent Posts list and Archive. So, I added it. I always thought my sidebar looked smaller than everyone else's, but I couldn't figure out why. It turns out I'm coming up on a year for having this blog. That means it's the longest I've ever continued to update any website I've ever had or been a part of.

OK, so a number of my male friends have gotten into the poker craze that's hit the nation over the past couple of years. I can honoestly say that, while I was interested, I felt it as being a passing fad. I thought the same thing about the rise of NASCAR popularity. Like the WWF who rocked, then sucked, then rocked, then sucked... I imagined these trends to follow suit (no pun intended) for poker, and, specifically, Texas Hold-'em. Unfortunately, my interest grew from watching the occasional WSOP show on ESPN2. I was invited to a few poker games over the past year and I greatly enjoyed the company. Specifically, I loved the fact that my pastors would join us in a beer and some poker. This is just one more reason why newhope is a great church. Even more, I appreciated just hanging out with the guys, making crude jokes about who brought nuts for hours, listening to blues or jazz and just having a lot of fun. I've never won back my money, but I always do pretty good. I'm rarely the first one out and usually I'm in the final three. Well, I accidentally watched a show on FSN sponsered by fulltiltpoker.net. The main pro poker player on the show is none other than "The Professor," Howard Lederer. I really enjoy Howard's style of play. His willingness to help other players and run commentary has earned him his nickname. He explains things well and in such a way that I understand it well enough to apply it. So, after catching this show, Learn from the Pros, I realized there was a lot I DIDN'T know about the game. I headed over to fulltiltpoker.net to see what the website had to offer. I had no intentions of playing online. After reading several of the articales there, I NEEDED to try these lessons out. Unfortunately, our most regular game hasn't been very regular and, worst, I have not been able to attend due to prior commitments. So, I went ahead and started playing online. I really enjoy it and am learning how to apply the techniques from the articles. Now, i can't wait for another game for some real life action. I should say that I am NOT playing for real money. Fulltiltpoker.net has a whole play money thing and I'm playing there. I've done pretty well and I'm keeping track of my stats in a MS Excel file to insure I'm ACTUALLY improving. There's plenty of growing room in the play money area, but eventually, I might try my hand at the penny=dollar poker tables. I can play at the play money tables for a while as I build-up my bankrole and move into higher stakes play money tables. The better players are at the higher stakes tables, even with play money. To improve my game, I'll need to play with better players. Soner or later, and probably MUCH, MUCH later, I'll be playing at the high stakes play money tables and the only way to play with better players would be to play with real money. My thought was that if I can win a couple of real life games, I'll take just $5 of my "winnings" and play a little online for real money. The nice part will be that the penny=dollar real money poker tables SHOULD be a higher caliber player than high stakes play money and I should be able to improve my game with VERY little investment. If they aren't very good, then I'll win lots and actually make a few dollars online. The main reason for getting better at poker has little to do with money. Though it's nice to win some every once in a while, I'm hoping to raise the caliber of the guys that *I* play poker with. That is, with regards to their poker game... I'm not sure if I can raise the caliber of anything else with these guys. :) I'm hoping that we all get better and that makes the games even more interesting than they already are. I'd like to play more than just Texas Hold-'em and I'd like for the games to have a reputation of being "good." ... "If you want a good poker game..." or, better yet, others want to play with us because they want to raise the level of THEIR game. Of course, this is all assuming that all this work and research will actually result in my being a better poker player. Someone get a game going! I need to know!

Well, Felix came home last week, as most of you know. I spent all day Saturday detailing him. I used many of my new Zaino products. The real question is how well will they last? They brag that a car being used everyday, they will last 6 months with proper care. If they last that long, they're worth it. I'm hoping that since Felix lives in the garage, I'll get at least six months out of them. The process for an entire car is tiring. However, Felix looks good. I still have more to do, but I can tell you that Zaino wash does a nice job of minimizing water droplets on the car. The polish is difficult to see when you're applying it, so it's difficult to know when to reload your applicator. Lastly, the gloss enhancer is not as easy to apply as you might imagine. Did I mention that the Zaino system is supposed to reduce the dust build-up on the car by up to 60%? With the pollen these days, that's a nice little feature if it's true. It rained today and I'm very interested to see how Felix looks now. One other note, I'm using Mother's All-Wheel Cleaner. While it doesn't particularly clean the hard to reach areas just by spraying on and washing off per the instructions, it does seriously reduce future build-up of brake dust on your wheels. I believe continued use should make future wheel cleanings much easier. Products I have yet to test are Mother's Back-to-Black and Zaino's Leather Conditioner. As for the 'Canes, like our cats, they are ours, but will often be referred to as "mine" by one of us.

We'll find out today. We're going to pick him up... specifically, I am going to pick him after a repair, not replacement of the bumper. I realized that it *IS* the dealer doing the repairs after all. I don't think I can find someone more qualified or better at repairing these cars than them, so I need to be OK with a repair instead of a replacement. I've learned, and you should learn from my mistake, that there is sometimes a "don't have to get an adjuster to look at it if it's less than a certain amount" amount. ASK about this... you may want to get an estimate and decide to NOT have an adjuster look at the damages... if you're happy with your body shop selection and happy with their solution and the amount is low enough, then maybe you can get exactly what you want without hassle. I wish we would have done this and gotten a new bumper, but I'll live with a repair. The molding will be brand new. And, the repair is guaranteed for as long as we own the car. Since it's brand-spanking-new, I hope that ends up being a long time. Yes, the Canes lost... I blame it on my crew who are NOT Caniacs and did not care about being on-time. Without encouragement from me from the moment the puck drops, my Canes just could not beat the Devils. I am waiting for my little sister to call me to gloat. Of course, I can gloat back that I was, at least, at the game while she watched it on TV.

Things are finally calming down at work, at least, in my area. That means, I'll still need to help other areas catch up and everyone should pray that we don't get any thunderstorms in this area for at least a couple of weeks. I know, I know, Raleigh has a water shortage... It can rain as long as there's no thunder and lightning. Meanwhile, I've been given some new toys. Specifically, a new phone and a new laptop from my wonderful company. My new phone is a Blackberry. Yes, that's right. If I manage this right, Sabrina won't actually need to be my PDA anymore. 'Cause, I actually have one now. It's very cool and I like it. There were doubts as my work never really stops, so I thought, this just allows more of it to follow me around. But, I've found that it actually allows me to keep my Inbox cleaner, handle issues faster and, all-in-all, helps me do my job faster and better. The interface is a little "clunky" and it's not particularly the best phone I've ever had. It's a lot more difficult to look up phone bumbers than it used to be. However, I can have a lot more info in the phone than I used to have, and, well, now I can Email from it. My other new toy is a new Dell laptop. There are two main features that make me happy. I now have built-in wireless networking. This is just convenient that I don't have to get one other thing out of my bag and wait for it to "load." Most importantly is USB... now, I know, USB isn't that exciting these days. But, my old laptop had USB 1.1. This one has 2.0. If you don't know the difference, it's about 10x faster. This is important when you need to move around 1 gig of files. The actual difference is from 20 minutes to about 2 minutes. Additionally, there are more USB ports. With the addition of my Blackberry, this was a need. Even prior, my mouse and printer took up my only two ports. Now, with my new port replicator (docking station), I have 5 USB ports! The only drawback to the laptop is a limited screen resolution. I like big desktops and don't mind little icons and text. I like a lot of work room. I have dual displays setup in my "office" (yes, I have a cube). My screen resolution is 1024x768. I prefer 1280x1024. But, c'est la vie. Lastly, at church, I recently ran into some frustrating dimmer packs. Unfortunately, the problem pack is up very high. The best solution is to switch the dimmer pack with one much closer to the ground. This is a daunting task. The dimmer pack isn't, but the unmounting at heights is. However, I tell you this not because of the work needing to get done, but because of what I was told on Sunday. You see, with the dimmer pack not working right, we were down 2 channels. The meant three actual lights were NOT working on Sunday morning. Yet, I got more compliments about lights than I do on most Sundays. Perhaps less *IS* more? Anyway, I'm the lights seemed better because Rob did a fantastic job on sound. I can honestly say I've never heard it sound that good unless Angela was running the board. Moreover, the WAM team worked particularly hard at particularly difficult music. They really brought their A game. Through all of this, I can only hope that we all, myself included, remember that we strive for such excellence to praise our God and to create an environment for the Holy Spirit to move and someone to, at least, consider God as more than they did before they arrived.

So, my order from Zaino came in and I am very excited. It came with a letter that feels like it was written by Sal Zaino himself, though it obviously wasn't. There's a paragraph that ends with, if you have questions, just give me a call! Another section explains that the polish takes longer to dry in humid weather and then proceeds to state, there's nothing I can do about this. On the back, there's a local New Jersey number. I may have to call it because the accelerator that Nick got me for my birthday isn't mentioned in the two page detailed car care info. I think it just speeds up the polish process and adds to the potency of the polish. I still have to get Felix's bumper replaced. The dumb adjuster from the dumb girl's dumb insurance company thinks the damagers can be repaired despite the dealer already telling us it can't be and has to be replaced. Tonight, I plan on calling the dumb girl's dumb insurance company to see if I can still do the "fax the estimate if it's less than $1000" thing and bypass the adjuster completely. I should have done that to begin with... Last night, I went to the church to work on the lights. I only got about half of the work done because of a very stupid dimmer pack. One fuse was stuck in it and another fuse kept blowing. I promise you that everything is 10x more frustrating on top of a 28' or taller extension ladder. Also, someone stole my extension cord for one of my lights on the stage. I later found out that it was probably Benji. Still, it was part of the reason that I only got about half of what needed to get done, done. But, I woke up this morning feeling much better than I have over the past two weeks. I won't get to sleep in very much tomorrow morning because I have Adobe Premiere training @ 9am. Still, every little bit helps. I'm hoping to go home tonight and play video games and that might help, too. I played a little bit this week and I definitely felt better. Other chores needing to get done over the next month or two is: *Hang black curtains on wall behind our TV. - This requires me to sand and paint some PVC piping then figure out the best way to hang the curtains so they look good. *Put down Pergo flooring in the first floor hallway - This requires me to pull up the vinyl and quarter round and seal the cement. *Figure out how to fix the ceiling border in the office.

I have never had to work this hard at my job. I am exhausted. My last post was about midway through all the work I've been doing. I'm passed stressed out, I think. I can't even take care of things that need to be taken care of like Felix's bumper and other paperwork that needs to get done. I'm sorry if I worried anyone with the last post. My intention was just a release that I was only able to get out electronically. Now, I just want to sleep for 12 hours and not think about work or cars or paperwork for a whole day. I just want to play video games and vegetate.