GO JIMMIE, GO! 3 in a row!

Three wins in a row for Jimmie as he takes the Lowe's Chevy to victory circle!
Such an exciting race, especially at the end. Jimmie restarted with about ten to go, running in fourth place. He quickly jumped out to the right of the Army car and went three wide into turn one and two. After dealing with a lapped car, Waltrip, he had the lead. Mark Martin in his 6, led more than 190 laps, but could not catch Jimmie at the end!
The last driver to win three Cup races in a row was Jeff Gordon. He did it in the late 90's by winning the last two races of the season, and the first of the next season.

Suicide Leaves

I'm driving home from work tonight when it happened. As I came around the last corner to my street, two leaves jumped off of their tree and landed just in front of my car. Now what caused them to jump off at that moment? Of all the days, of all the hours, of all the minutes and seconds. It happened just as I approached that these leaves jumped. Had I not been speeding two blocks earlier would I have missed this, or would they have waited for me?
Leaves survive a lot of things. They come out in the spring time. They are exposed to the extreme heat and light of the sun all summer long. They endure heavy rains and high winds as hurricanes passed through the area. Birds come in, build nests, bugs come in and eat some of the leaves. But many survive. Only to have the tree itself starve them in the winter. I'm thinking that these leaves, the ones that we all enjoy looking at in the fall, are suffering. They sit on the tree during these hard times, waiting for their time to go. The two of them that jumped tonight, must have seen the lights of my car approaching. This is a quick way to end the suffering. Maybe they discussed it ahead of time. To jump at the same time. It must have been a scary moment. Then you have to consider the awesome amount of timing these two must have had. The time it takes to slowly float to the road had to be taken into consideration.
There's still plenty of leaves left on this tree. I'll do my best to swerve out of the way the next time.

This can't be good.

Look toward the top center part of this picture. You may not recognize it at first so look closer. Yep, you got it. It's a heat sink over the CPU. The dust is SO thick you can actually see where the dust forms the shape of fan blades on the heat sink.
Now look to the bottom center of the picture. There is the fan that was covering the heat sink. I was hoping this thing would hold more dust. But I guess when you get to twice the weight of the fan itself, it's time to clean it.

Two things really brought on this investigation. One, the fan was running louder than normal. Then it was overheating the CPU (imagine that), and causing shut down. Cari had told me that she was having some problems while playing the Sims 2. She said it would shut the computer off and not come back for several minutes. I assured her I would look into the problem. Maybe someday when I had more time.

I took the cover off the case to help some air flow. (when you stop laughing, wipe the tears from your eyes and then continue reading...)
The other night, I was getting to do some online racing. During practice the computer shut off. Oh, crap! Now this is a serious problem! I took the other side of the case off, propped open a nearby door and opened the window. It was probably about sixty degrees out. Heh. So at ten PM, the door propped open, case laying on the floor, I raced. I even won the race!

The next morning I did the clean out. Woah. I didn't realize how deep that dust was. I now even have the case back on the computer. It had been off for several weeks.

"Come inside. You are embarrassing your family!"

Have you ever been told that before? You are not alone.

Went out to cut the grass this morning. It was just under sixty degrees. I was wearing my pretty plaid shorts and a t-shirt. After getting the mower from the shed, I realized it was a bit cooler than I had anticipated. I ran inside, swung open the closet, and scanned for a sweatshirt. Hmmm. None that I see. Went to the dresser and picked up a shirt. It was a bit thicker than a t-shirt. Red with grey short sleeves. Cari hates this shirt. Having properly warming myself, I ran back out to cut the grass.
I'll spare you the details on grass cutting today and get to the end of my story.

I was putting the lawnmower back in the shed, now around eleven am. Cari, who had been inside cleaning up, came outside. From over at the porch, I hear this sound. I look up and see Cari standing there. A horrified look on her face. What am I missing?

"I didn't think we brought that shirt when we moved!", she said.
You would have thought I committed a crime from the tone of her voice.
I replied, "I didn't think so either. Guess we got lucky."

That's when she let me know this was no joking matter. She screamed over to me, "Come inside! You are embarrassing your family!"
Are you kidding me? Is my hair not combed right for mowing grass? Maybe the shoes don't go. I'm mowing grass, and I have committed such an atrocity. I have no fashion sense! What was I thinking? Oh, that's right. I was COLD.

Next time I will get wardrobe approval before I head out the door to check the mail.

So how did the story end? I went inside to change my clothes of course. (I put that shirt in the laundry, I sure hope it ends up back in my dresser. It's a warm shirt.)

Bloggy, blog, blog.

I was checking out the main page at http://www.blogger.com.
There is a section toward the bottom that shows recently updated blogs. The list is all the blogs updated in a ten minute period. About fifteen minutes ago, this list was about a thousand entries long! I had checked it out the other day and it was around six hundred for that last ten minute period!

I didn't realize that many people could read, write, and use the internet. Seeing numbers like that made me realize I'll certainly never become an internet superstar blog writer. I'm just a speck. A speck with an audience of about five, max. This doesn't really bother me. I never expected to become internet superstar. I enjoy sitting down to write from time to time. I would like to sit and write short stories, even if I was the only one to enjoy them. I amuse myself.

Since I started this, I'll occationaly spend a few minutes randomly selecting blogs off of that list to read. I haven't found one yet worth bookmarking. Some have been half way interesting. Some were very boring. It is like taking a look into that persons life. Maybe someday, somebody will randomly select my blog to read. I hope they find it half way interesting. And if they happen to randomly select it now, I hope they come back in a week or so, to see what else I come up with.

Don't have a blog yet for yourself? What, are you living in the dark ages?

Hello Kitty!

This little kitten wondered into our yard one afternoon. How would you handle that? A small little kitten smelling your flowers? I thought, "release the hounds!" Ah!, but the hounds may be too slow. The barking probably would have scared off the kitty, but would it learn its lesson? Simple barking may not be enough to keep it away. So I decided to not release the hounds, I opted instead to RELEASE THE GIRL! For sure, this would cause the kitty much more trauma.

The girl pushed through the storm door, raced down the porch steps, and screamed, "Hello Kitty!" This little kitten perked up quick. Smelling flowers would have to wait for another day, another yard. Just as the cat turned to leave the property, two little hands got their grip on kitty hair. Swooped up a few feet in the air, this cat has now realized its error. This house belongs to a little girl.

Meredith kept this cat in her clutches for a few more minutes. Maybe the two would become friends. At her mothers request, the cat was released back to the ground. This baby kitty hardly had touched the ground, when it took off to the neighbors yard.

I have not seen this cat since the day of this picture.

*note: no little girls or kitties were harmed in the writing/photography of this post *

PASSWORDS coming out of my ears

I have up to four different passwords just at work for various tasks. I have login ID's and passwords for about a dozen forum groups. I have a password and ID for my 401K. I have a password for my e-mail account. . .times three. I race online. Guess what, the server has a password. We use teamspeak to communicate, yep, another password. Then, just for fun, every thirty days, my main password at work has to change. I used to just bounce between two different passwords. Each of them were four diget numbers. Hmm... That is too easy. New rules at work say that you can not use your previous password and now your password must contain letters and numbers.

Now, I do try and make this easier. Against advise I have read online, I tend to use the same one or two passwords for most of my online activity. The other day I wanted to check some things on my 401K and I couldn't remember my user ID. Tried a few times, then it locked me out. Ok, well, send me my info in an e-mail. Problem is I moved recently and the e-mail they have is still the old one. Now I had to call and actually have human contact to solve this.

Other problems I have run into is that my user ID, normaly a variation of Duck Hunter, is not always available.

We have become so secure now days, that we are even protected from getting into our own accounts! Well. I started a .txt file after I had to make that phone call yesterday. At least I'll try and log the lesser used ID/passwords.

So why do I say these are coming out of my ears? Is there a way to contain the spillage? Eww.
More on that problem later.

racing at Kansas

So I'm running an online race (Nascar Racing 2003) at Kansas the other night. 81 laps.

At the green flag, I make a move on the outside of the car in front of me, heading out of the tri-oval I'm up against the wall, nowhere to go, and my car goes spinning. The car on the inside came up just a bit into my rear side. No real damage to the car. Pitted for tires under caution and I was off again.
My car was handling like garbage. Wicked tight, hard to handle. I was running around fourth place. First and second place were about five seconds ahead of me, which is a HUGE lead in a race. Third place was about two seconds ahead of me and I was losing him lap by lap.

So, as I drive, I was watching lap times, and how my distance to the leader was changing. Time to get ready for a pit stop. Taking one hand off the wheel, I reached for the keyboard. I had to do something to fix this car. Adjusted all four tire pressures. Adjusted the track bar. Moved some wedge. 28 laps to go, I had just fallen to fifth place. Time to pit. Good entry, stopped on my marks and got out clean. Back on the track, the car was starting to handle much better. Pitting under green put me more than a lap down.
I was about a second faster per lap (sometimes more) on my fresh tires. The top four cars continued to drive the track. With 15 to go, two of them pitted. A few laps later, another pitted. He came out just ahead of me but recieved a black flag for speeding on pit road. He would have to go into pits for a drive through penalty. Finaly with about 10 to go, the only car not pitted went in. I looked down at the times. I WAS WINNING! I had about an eleven second lead over the rest of the field with ten to go. I had worn tires. I had to stay within a second slower of these guys to keep my lead. The plan was working. With two to go, I was told I may not have enough gas. WHAT DID YOU JUST TELL ME?! White flag...one to go! Fuel light is lit (almost empty). Second place about 3 seconds back. Flying down the back straight....let off the gas...apply just a touch of brake to turn the car into turn 3.... back on the gas slightly turning into turn 4. . . pedal to the floor, coming out of the turn. I can see the checkers now. My car stutters. OH, gas! Checkered flag, I actually won this race that started out so badly. As I drove my car back toward turn 1, slowing it down, the engine went silent. Just enough gas to make it.

What a great race!

Celebration!

Randy celebrates riding his bike with no training wheels.

first posting

Just set this thing up. Hope to have regular updates on my thoughts here.
Maybe some short stories and for sure you'll be seeing some photos here.

This should be a pretty easy thing to use, so updates will be faster than my previous attempts at websites.

Hope to really get some creative things going on here...