You guys will never believe it!

Someone tried to "hack" my webcam PC yesterday, unbelievable huh? As far as I can tell they were trying to deface or change what the webpage the cam is displayed on says. Fortunately for me it didnt seem to work. The stuff they were doing seemed to be on the IRC port 6667, and their(or their proxies) ip was 207.126.115.44, which rattles back to some place called Edison, NJ. I thought about contacting the place that IP is owned by but for now since the attack seemed harmless I havent. I blocked port 6667 on my router and tightened up security a bit on the webcam PC(Which is in my homemade DMZ) and virus scanned the machine just to see if there was anything on there I should be concerned about, it came up clean as a whistle.

Weird tho. I didnt imagine in my wildest dreams someone would be pathetic enough to try that.

Anyway...Its picture Friday. So here is your picture for the week. Its me at the north shore (Lake superior). Incidental its my mommy's favorite picture of me(she says I look like my dad in it).



Well have a great day and please dont try and hack my LAN again! THANKS!

Good morning world!

Not much to say today, except that I got a webcam up and its pointed at my fishtank, so you too can watch a live feed of my pufferfish (When he decides to swim by the camera). Here is a handy link to it, the only problem Ive had with it so far is that the dumb camera keeps falling off the spot I have it taped to. And its alittle blurry, Ill try and get it more focused tonight when I get home.

In other news I ate waaaaaayyyy too many beans last night, OMPH! I feel like Im going to float away. Icky bloatedness.

Anyway have a great day!

Man, I have been having the most vivid dreams lately.

All night, every night. Last night me and my wife were shopping for houses and I realized it was a dream and I said to her, "you can have any house you want, this is a dream" and she said, "Whatever, Robert" and then she said, "How about that one?" and pointed at a giant old house up on a hill. I said ok and we walked up to it, but it was inhabited by my paternal grandmother Elenore, So my wife didnt think that would work, then I used my magical dream powers to make all of Elenore's stuff disappear and all of a sudden all our stuff was there, then I noticed the bathtub was dirty, so I used my magical dream powers to clean the bathtub, which kinda half worked, so I tried again, which prompted my good friend(and martial arts master) John Harrington to say that it wasnt a dream at all, to which I responded if its not a dream then you can beat me up, because we all know you could beat me up in real life, so he tried to hit me but then I like held his arms and he couldnt escape my grasp, well he became very upset because he still couldnt believe it was a dream. Then all of a sudden for some reason I had to eat a bunch of runny eggs because the kids wouldnt eat them. Then I woke up, wondering what the dream symbolism of runny eggs was.

It was weird, then I went back to sleep, and I had some more dreams about people living in the woods and collecting holographic figurines, Which I offered to sell them some more of, then I had a dream that I was the child of count Dracula, who was driving in a way too fast manner to the house of his next victim, Mrs. Dracula thought he was driving too fast with the child in the car, to which he just sped up, and I remember looking at the speedometer and he was going 90. Mrs. Dracula just got more upset by that and started yelling at him. I thought the whole fight was rather silly because since we were vampires we obviously couldnt die in a car crash.

Then I woke up and I was running 15 minutes late because the alarm didnt go off. But this was in real life so I had to hurry up and get the kids off to school and take my wife to work because she works the same hours as me today and we car polled.

Ive been having crazy lucid dreams like that for about a week now and I must admit I kinda like it.

I have to go and find out what runny eggs in dreams means now, sorry for the exceedingly long post but, yaknow, I type them as they come to me.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Howdy, What a long weekend I had.

I warned em once, I warned em twice, but the third time I saw my rosy barbs chomp at my pufferfish I decided they had to go. They were a real pain in the butt to catch, but with alittle teamwork from Johnathan(15) I had em in my hot little nets, then I flushed em. I felt bad about it too...I loved those rosy barbs, but if I had to choose between them and the puffer the choice was obvious, whooooosh, down the toilet they went. I tried to pawn them off on some of my fish friends but none would take them.

Oh well. Kinda depressing but Ill get over it.

Speaking of which here is a pretty crappy video I made of the puffer eating some tadpoles I caught in my brand new pool net over the weekend



Have a great day!

I just got done feeding some tadpoles to my puffer.

I have the day off today. Thanks to all the dead people of the world.

Esp the vets. Thanks for sacrificing yourselves for freedom, justice and the American way. I hope us live Americans do a good job of keeping our ideals safe and protected.

Anyway I have some fish water changes to do and I need to find out if I need to drop off my time sheet today.

Im sorry if my post was lame today, Im alittle sleepy and groggy and Im having problems thinking straight.

Have a great day!

3 day weekend! Woohoo!!!

I got big plans this weekend too. Im going to drag some ponds with a net to catch bugs and small crustacions for my pufferfish, a little bar-b-q, and tonight I have to go to a friend of my wife's kid's graduation. Hopefully I can avoid any after party, I really dont want to hang around with a bunch of 18 year old kids, meh, they annoy me.

Carrie had asked yesterday that I post more pictures, so Ill try and start having a picture friday or something like that and post at least one picture a week. Today Im going to post my favorite picture ever! Its from my wedding, I particularly enjoy my wifes expression in it. Dont you?

Good Morning!

I had to come into work an hour early today and I must admit, Im pretty sleepy, I didnt get to sleep when I should have last night...I nodded off about 1:20, after lying in bed since 11. Ugh. 4 hours and 40 minutes is not enough sleep, I remember I used to sustain that for a week. I dont know how I did it.

In other news I put up an ftp server last night and stuck a bunch of crap on it. Lemme know if you would like an account. It sure took awhile to copy 20 gb(Mp3s) of data to it. I think Ill end up putting another 20 gb of stuff on it tonight(Read here cracked games).

Another one of my big goals today is to not mention my puffer fish in my blog post.

Guess I failed.

Anyway have a great day!

I bought a scoop of gravel from the pet store last night full of baby crayfish and baby snails, the pufferfish went nuts over the crayfish, ate 3 in 10 minutes and then swam around happily, he got noticeably fatter from the meal, they did give him a bit of a problem (They werent going down easy) he had to spin and tear them apart, then he learned that they put up alot less fight if he bit their legs off.

Also, some of you may know that Im an aficionado of "old" music, in that vein Im going to share a song with you all

The band: Zager and Evans, the year: 1967, The song: In the Year 2525(Exordium and Terminus), this song was actually #1 on the billboard top 100 in 1969 during the moon landing.

Anyway I think thats enough lead up.

Heres a video that somehow has made its way to youtube(the video is horrible but the recording quality of the song is excellent(considering the year), all and all I consider it a great song outlining the dehumanizing factor of technology on people):



Thats all for me, over and out, and have a great day!

Me: Im sorry for being a spineless little worm.
Wife: You are not a spineless little worm.
Me: Excellent point, Im a fairly large worm, who does have a backbone, thank you for correcting me.

In other news I think Im going to take a net to a ditch and see what I can fish out. Hopefully no fish. I need some spineless little worms for my pufferfish, who incidently is the most named fish I have, sometimes people call him/her Mr Puffs, Puff Daddy, Puffy Puff, fisherpuff and Pditty Puffmeister.

I tell you its ridiculous.

Im feeling alittle incontinent this morning. Ugh I hope that passes.

Everyone have a great day!

I spent all weekend looking for a place that sold blackworms, bloodworms, daphnia or pretty much any other water dwelling thing for my pufferfish to eat.

No success.(Besides more snails I bought)

Looks like Im going to have to take a net out and drag the bottom of some creek or ditch or something full of water and see what I come up with.

Even tho I couldnt find him many new treats to eat he is doing well, and he must be eating something because hes pooping. I just worry that hes going to clean out my fishtank of everything suitable for him to eat. With the exception of baby guppies(always in big supply around my house) which he started to hunt over the weekend, its pretty funny he will herd a bunch of them into a corner and then munch one.

Anyway thats enough about my pufferfish, I also over the weekend took down all the winterizing I did to the porch last fall and moved the giant ficus and about a million other plants outside. Now I just need to get my porch wired for tv and I can entertain guests out there while we are barb-b-q-ing or watching lost or things like that.

Anyway I hope everyone had a great weekend! And have an equally nice day today!

Melissa and I tracked a dollar bill at that wheresgeorge place.

She thought it was pretty neat. (Id seen it a billion time)

Our bill went from williston ND to brainerd MN. 461 mils in 332 Days, 5 Hrs, 32 Mins

Good morning and happy first laser day(so google tells me)

Im so in love with my dwarf puffer. I brought him home a pile of 10 ramshorn snails and it was pretty fun to watch him terrorize/eat them. This morning if any of the pile were left alive they were hiding in their shells.

Today is payday so I have plans for some money

I need to buy 2 cheap wood clamps to put on my fish tank so I can give my friend gregg back his

I need to buy some more trumpet snails for the puffer to hunt/eat and for me to put in another tank so that they can breed safely away from the pufferfish

I want to buy some Stilton cheese so I can ingest 12-15 grams of it before bedtime because it makes you have lucid dreams I guess, pretty funny documentation of its effects here

And maybe Ill eat a big, fat burger for lunch today.

Also I think I might actually play some video games tonight (Ive been kinda slacking on that lately)

Alright well thats it for today, hope everyone has a good one!

Good Morning! (or afternoon or evening whichever the case may be)

Fish are doing great, no busted tank, wood clamp/vice seems to be working well. Like I said yesterday I dont know how it couldnt.

I dont really have that much to blog about

on monday I almost ran over a squirrel, the little bugger ran out in front of my car and just stood there. I stopped (of course) and he still just stood there. So I blew the horn and he ran away, the end...

Not the best squirrel story I ever wrote I know, but if you wanted to read the best squirrel story I ever wrote its
here along with me fighting with some tv chick and talking about polyoctagon candies.

Im sure no one will back read my blog but me.... :^(

Anyway have a great day!

Well, My epoxy job didnt hold.

Im done messing around. I put a 18" wood frame clamp on that sucker and Im sure it cant fail, the only problem is Im running the risk of the clamp cracking the glass but I left the home made brace in and clamped right on the outside of it. So I know I dont have too much compression.

Why does everything have to be such a pain? Seriously now? Why?

Last night I made a kinda weirdo dinner, the kids wanted it so I complied. It went like this:

ramen
fried pork
and egg on top sunny side up.

They saw it on that naruto show and have been asking for it for awhile so last night when my wife was at work I complied. I thought it sounded VERY gross. But when I actually dug into it it was very very good. No wonder those ninjas on that show are always eating it.

Anyway...Off to work.

Well, the new cross beam is in, working great, held with 50 gallons in it overnight. WOOT! No more worries about my fishtank disintegrating on my living room floor. WOOT!

I am quite pleased with myself.

No fish deaths, even tho I dropped a glob of epoxy in (And fished it out before it hit the bottom).

The pufferfish is especially looking great, he didnt get near as skittish as the other fish (I thought my rosy barbs were going to keel over from a heart attack).

Ill put the last 5 gallons of water in tonight.

Sorry I have no other news to report.

Have a great day!

Im very worried about my 55 gallon fishtank today, yesterday when I was doing water changes, the middle support beam on top broke, the glass proceeded to swell out about 1/4th of an inch under the water pressure, and I began to freak out.

I duct taped it and that seemed to be good, but overnight the duct tape has stretched and now we are back at the swell of 1/4 inch.

The glass didnt break even under the strain of the swell, and big "DWONK" noise, (which happened a few times while I tried to tape it) but I think I need to go buy a piece of plastic and cut it to fit and some high powered epoxy and glue a replacement beam to the frame.

Ugh what a nightmare.

I hope it can hold until next weekend because quite frankly I dont have any monies for that sort of thing right now. (And if it busts I guess its covered under my insurance).

Did I mention nightmare? Yeah I believe I did.

Anyway hope you all have a good day and say a prayer my fishtank stays together.

PS. Puffer is doing great tho...Better than the other fish with the big stress-athon yesterday.

Happy mommies day mommies of the world.

Working on getting a picture of puffer but I have to do water changes and such and really Im just procrastinating by even making this post.

But I did look at the broken dryer (Motor frozen, junked, poop)

And I made the kids clean up the House.

Anyway have a great day!

I got a dwarf puffer to occupy the angelfish's old niche in my fishtank. Its .75 inches long but is a mean little voracious predator, supposedly fast moving should be able to deal with it the same way they did with the angelfish (By staying away from it) but we will see if it turns into a problem. Maybe Ill post a picture of him/her soon but I dunno.

Im off to make gobs now. Hope everyone has a good day.

Spent all morning fighting with a label printer and some dumb barcode printing software called label matrix. Man it is some junky, buggy BS I tell you.

But anyway, today is friday, and its payday, and I have some extra computer work booked for after work tonight, and I wanna buy some fish and renew my everyquest subscript, and this weekend I need to do some water changes and clean my porch and my yard, and and and and

and I am making GOBS!

I love gobs, my mom always used to make them when I was a kid, and yesterday I got her to email me the recipe:

Ok here we go: Oh by the way this is a double recipe I never saw the point of making less!!!


Filling or icing:

10 tabl flour
2 cups milk
Cooking until thick and creamy. mix following and add to milk mixture
2 cups powd sugar
2 sticks margarine (do not use butter )
1 cup crisco
1/2 teas salt
2 teas vanilla

Gob-cake

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup crisco
2 eggs
1cup buttermilk ( you can use a little less )
1 teas vanilla
4 cups flour
2 teas baking soda
1/2 teas baking powder
1/2 teas salt
1/2 cup cocoa
Ladle onto greased and floured sheet bake for 5 mins ant 450- I always had to plat with the temp/I never made it that hot!!! And I got busy!!!


You can always cheat and use box devils food cake mix and 1 cup flour


Anyway, I gotta run, I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Im feeling much better today! Praise the Lord.

The one good thing about being depressed like that is usually when it wears off I seam to be in an awesome mood.

Like today. So yeah that is great.

Im growing a bunch of catnip at home on a flower pot and its sprouting up like no tomorrow. My cat should love that in a couple months.

Thinking about buying some new fish for my tank, Im certainly open to input, must be freshwater, and suitable for a 55 gallon with some smaller faster fish that can hold their own and are semi aggressive. Lemme know what you guys think I should get.

Sometimes...

Sometimes...

Sometimes I want to jump out my 3rd floor window, or head on collide with a truck hauling construction equipment, or put a shotgun in my mouth and pull the trigger.

Sometimes I would like to do it in a less dramatic manner like with carbon monoxide, or hemlock, or cyanide.

Sometimes Im sick of being a worm beget by worms on this insignificant planet in the middle of nowhere, struggling to survive, knowing things are not gonna get any better only worse(I mean lets face it).

Sometimes diminishing returns and entropy and economic insecurity and the fragility of the human condition are just too much for me and I break, and I cry, and I wonder why God would do this to every single person who ever lived or will live, why cant he/she/it just be here, why couldnt I be created perfectly, instead of like this, some wriggling piece of flesh adrift in the universe and condemned to the unavoidable fate of decrepitation and demise?

This fucking sucks. Sometimes when I cant just glaze over my mind and destract myself from the harsh cold realities of my existance. When I put on that mask of the helpful, friendly guy who doesnt have a care in the world, because he is blessed, yeah sometimes I cant wear that mask and then I can see how cursed I really am.

Sorry about being late with the post, I had some accounting person at my desk this morning from another building, so I had to let her finish her thing before I could get in here.

On with the post,

Yesterday, I got home from work and my computer was behaving very strangely, I had weirdo artifacing going on on the top of my screen and windowed application kept getting a bunch of squiglies on them.

I thought it was hardware. Thats the worst.

So I took out my proc and video card, cleaned the dust off them and put them back in.

Nothing, same prob.

I prayed to God alot that my computer was not fried(Id rather have all my fish die), well the problem persisted, so I decided it was most likely my video card and I took it out again and looked for the dreaded scorched solder points.

I found none.

What I did find was big fat strait pin connecting 2 chips! I took it off (It was wedged in) and things worked great!

Whew. That was close one.

Thanks Lord for watching my back. Cause that could have been much worse. (Like burn down my house worse)

Anyway have a great day!

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!

Woot! GO MEXICO! SCORE!

GOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!
GOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!
GOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!

Take that france, you suck!

Also, I had a good weekend and caught up on my sleep. Cant get enough of the Kate Nash either, I keep downloading giant compilations just to get one Kate Nash B-side.

Sad really.

Im supposed to run a heroes unlimited campaign for the kids this weekend.

Im thinking a sort of escape from area 51 type deal.

I know Im a nerd but have you ever seen this?

I was up to late last night. Ugh. Im tired. 2:30 is too late.

I think my male rosy barb is about to die, hes been all mopey for about 3 days now, I dont know what his problem is, he looks fine, but he doesnt want to eat. I think maybe he wants another male to fight with but I dont want to put a new one in there because they are 5 bucks each and Im pretty sure he would kill it in about 2 minutes (New ones are babies and MUCH smaller)

well, anyway I just need to struggle through a few hours and then I can go home and take a nap.

Have a great day and a good weekend.

Spring has officially sprung!

I came out to my car this morning to the undeniably springy sight of a giant bird crap on my windsheild.

Joy of joys! Nature is sure awesome!

I havent seen that in at least 8 months.