Archived News starting from 07-07-2012 and earlier
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North Atlantic Oscillation is to blame for making my summer an unbearable heat wave, and I intend to sue it for incompetence. Every year it brings cooler air to keep the weather closer to the mid 70s but this year it's not doing it's job and I'm taking action! Join me in my class action lawsuit, only together can we bring change!

Last year Lila was only
5 months old for the July 4th celebration, but this year she was fully aware of her surroundings and ready for some $29.99 Wal-Mart grade entertainment. We started the day with a patriotic photo shoot, eventually convincing Lila her star glasses look better on her head. The evening consisted of Lila alternating between pulling Lisas hands off her ears and clapping at the fireworks while the constant mortar fire from the neighbors didn't really bother her until the very end of the night. While she won't be ready to upgrade to full on mortars and bottle rockets anytime soon, I can tell she'll probably become a pyromaniac.

On my way home today I passed an ambulance followed closely by two police cars and decided it was an odd caravan. About 3 blocks later I saw
this and was informed by a few bystanders it was a police chase that ended with the corvette slamming into the building. While disappointed I missed the event, I'm also glad I wasn't between the building and the Corvette.

My
last experiment with storage speed involved a single 60GB SSD which turned out to be slower than my
last upgrade to the motherboard controller for my dual Velociraptor drives. Today I found a sweet enough deal to go dual SSDs using two Crucial M4 128GB drives and it handily
blows away the velociraptors. The Windows 7 experience index is
pegged at 7.9 (the highest it goes) for storage and everything I do so far is instant. I went from ~260 MB/s to over 500 MB/s sequential read while the burst hit almost 650 MB/s. At this point I'm fairly confident my limit is the on-board RAID controller but I've lost my desire to push something I rarely use anymore to the absolute limit. Is this me getting old, or is this a shift in technology to mobility and convienience over performance? I'm sure I'll read this in a few years and realize it's both.

Almost 2 months after my Focus ST
initial order I finally received confirmation my order is
ready to build. While there is no mention of when it will be built or when I can expect to take delivery I feel better having the confirmation. At this point even if I have it a few days before it snows I'll be happy, but hopefully sooner than that.
Lila and I decided to take a walk this evening; collecting rocks, dandelions, auto-parts and anything else that we found on the sidewalk. About halfway through the walk Lila stopped and decided to jump while saying "boom" repeatedly. I'm not sure if she was making a comment on our violent society or just had to poop, but the
video makes me laugh every time I watch it.
With the first day of summer come and gone, it was high time Lila had a bonfire to enjoy despite the recent heat wave making it a ridiculous idea. She stayed
fairly cautious around the actual fire, but didn't quite figure out
ladder golf or
cornhole. In both cases she figured out the basic throwing motion and made the effort so by next year I'm sure she'll be a pro at both.

My second fathers day ever went fairly well with a
visit to see my sister in Grand Rapids. We feasted on bacon-stuffed burgers, grilled corn, and avocado salad. Lila was the star of the show of course, making an extra effort to not be cranky or tired on account of the special day.

With the Fusion at 40% remaining oil life, and the Cougar probably not due for another 1,000 miles, today was the perfect day to change oil in both cars. Now that Lila is walking, it was high time she started pulling some weight around the house. I ignored her question about why I was wasting money changing oil so early and told her to
hand me wrenches when I asked for them. The first two requests were filled fairly quickly, but by the third she opted to explore the lawn mower and I didn't even both asking afterwards as the noise from the grinder she was using to sharpen the mower blade was too loud to hear anything. In the end I managed to get both cars changed before nap time despite my helper slacking off. Most importantly she didn't drink any anti-freeze or brake cleaner, a success all by itself.
The
Tumbler Tour stopped in before the Tigers game today and I felt the need to run down and
take some photos along with a
photosynth. When I arrived they were still setting up the crowd ropes so several security guards kept repeating "step away please" whenever someone new showed up. I pretended they were Jokers henchmen and asked them "why so serious?" to which they had no response, so I touched the tumbler and ran.
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