Archived News starting from 01-13-2004 and earlier
BlogAnother year, another NAIAS. This year I went with my dad and
Steve and continued the tradition of taking off work to go during a weekday to avoid the mass amounts of people that attend during the weekends. It was a
pretty good show, but no surprises. I was secretly hoping for the new Cougar to debut, but it looks like I'll have to wait another year or so. The
Ford GT and
new Mustang were highlights, along with the
new Corvette. A
hydrogen powered RX8 and a
hybrid Escape were also very cool. GM put out
IR download stations at each brand booth. A good idea in my opinion, and it made a cool "download complete" noise that was worth the 5-10 seconds of download time.
Today Melissa and I decided to try out the cross-country skis I inherited from my parents. The aptly named "LOLA Valley Park" is a perfect spot and the fact that it's only only a short walk from my house was a major contributing factor to the decision.
Melissa has since decided to go pro, I decided to
look like a dork, and the cat
disapproved of the whole thing.
While shopping for a new dresser a few weeks ago, I decided to give in to the consumer in me and get a whole new bedroom set instead. Lastnight it arrived at the store and Melissa and I picked it up and assembled it in my room. Now for the first time in my life, I have a complete matching bedroom set consisting of a headboard, nightstand and
a dresser and chest. It's certainly an improvement over my random pieces of furniture I had before. I guess it's just another sign of lost youth when you start getting excited about new furniture. That or I've got a bad case of cabin fever from all this cold weather.
As you can see from the
Gnome Cam, it snowed almost 2 feet last night and this morning. Apparently Butt the Gnome
was not happy about being outside during the recent storm and is currently on strike. The strike involves sitting on my porch holding a sign, as opposed to just sitting on my porch. To be fair, the fact that he's nailed to the porch probably limits the actions he can take, and although I'm not in any way inclined to take him off my porch, I decided to look up the
www.freethegnomes.com web site referenced on his sign. After reading about the organization, I have a strong feeling they had something to do with the
disappearance of Myrone the Gnome. While not as militant as the
Gnome Liberation Front, I don't think they would hold themselves above kidnapping for political purposes. I for one am not backing down. Gnomes have a genetic predisposition to be decorative and using them for any other purpose is
sick and perverted.
Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully sent a radio signal after the spacecraft had bounced and rolled for several minutes following its initial impact at 11:35 p.m. EST (8:35 p.m. Pacific Standard Time) on January 3. Fortunately CNN decided to tune into the event and I was able to watch the whole thing live. It's amazing to think a device created on this planet is now roving around under human control on Mars. The next rover is scheduled to land Jan 24th and I plan to stay up late for that landing as well.
Click here for photos from the Rover.
The
Blacknova Traders game on this server has been reset and patched with the
create universe patch which will hopefully fix the recent scoring issues. I will stick to a 6-month reset cycleuntil further notice, so the next game reset will occur June 2nd, 2004.
This
new years Melissa and I made dinner for everyone to initiate the Redford Dinner Club. After we ate, I smoked a cigar which I still have the taste of in my mouth, and it's not pleasant. After smoking, Duane tried to
get my cat drunk and was marginally successful. The result was difficult to judge since he was already high off catnip. We soon realized we were too old to care about the new year we decided to visit Mike's party. We stayed for a few hours and finally got home around 4:00am, which counts for bonus points since all bars close at 3:00am.
The temperature got up to 65°F today. A perfect day to be home from work, and fortunately I was. I took my
Cougar for a spin without a jacket, and even put the windows down until my face got numb, then I decided it was more like September in January. Unfortunately my inflatable snowman
succumbed to the heat around 1:15pm and was fully melted by 1:40pm. I wouldn't dream of complaining about 65° weather, but I hope it snows at least one more time this year so I can make my annual non-inflatable snowman.
I'll be cat sitting a co-workers cat for the next month at my house. They dropped him off around 1:00pm and my cat is
still not too happy about it. As long as he doesn't eat the new cat I'll call it a success. We've been
keeping him occupied with his tail, which he has yet to realize is attached to him. Keith and Lindsay
stopped by to help
Melissa and I put my 1000 piece space shuttle puzzle together. We (actually Lindsay and Melissa) managed to get the
external tank done before Keith started
having dreams about becoming a NASA engineer. After playing "mission control" we watched the
stupidest movie in the world, which was so bad Keith and Lindsay left immediately to try and wipe it from their memories.
Today,
Joseph and Lavonne came to visit their
disturbing gnome and
see my rack.
Stavos planned a Lord of the Rings viewing that we wound up leaving too late for and had to fight for seats. Nobody seemed to care about the two from Florida who had made the long journey to Michigan, at least not enough to give up any seats, so we sat in the fifth row from the screen. A good movie was had by all. After the movie was a stop at Redford Inn (Grille) and a good time was had by all. Finally we stopped at
this place and said hello to the nice swiss couple and their gnomes.
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