Guess What's in My Neighbor's Junk Pile

The answer to the last one was a microwave, specifically an above the stove type model. I probably shouldn't have zoomed the picture in. It blurred it too much.












Have a try at this one:

Guess What's in My Neighbors Junk Pile

Here's a cut out portion of a picture of my crazy neighbor's junk pile. Guess what it is. First person with a correct answer gets nothing. Except my everlasting respect. Or nothing.

Live Your Drearm

Drunk graffitiing. Like drunk dialing but anonymous, unless you get caught, then its equally as embarrassing.



Here's the rest of the pictures from my most recent lunch excursion.

The water pipeline.


The ladder to get down to the pipeline.


A view down the pipeline.


The spot from where I took the 2nd picture.


Blue Heron nests.


Just a shot of the river.


Looking down.


Manchester bridge.


Oops. No more railing.


Don't fall in.


Time to turn around.


The view back.


Random pictures of the river.




Other photos, if you are so inclined.

Pipeline
Richmond
Herons

Toodles.

Trees

Transplanted some trees in the past couple of weeks. River birches. In ten to fifteen years they will look like this:

Fabulous Movie Review®

Gone Baby Gone
Based on a Dennis Lehane (an excellent writer) novel and adapted by Ben Affleck (a bad actor, but a good screenplay writer when helped by his buddy, Matt Damon) to the silver screen, I was a little skeptical that this would be good.

A little background first. Dennis Lehane is one of my favorite authors. All of his novels are set in and around Boston, so you get that sense of being there. My two favorite books of his are Mystic River and Shutter Island. The former already made into an excellent movie and the latter in the process, which I am very excited about.

However, its been 6 or 7 years since I read Gone, Baby, Gone. I honestly didn't remember anything about it. This was good in 2 ways. One, I could watch the movie and not curse every 5 minutes about how Ben Freakin Affleck ruined the story, and two, the ending was a surprise.

Oh, but, by the way, it's not a happy ending. It's a very sad tale. That much I remember from the book. I'm glad Ben I Know Matt Damon Affleck kept that intact.

Gagknee's grade: A-

Fabulous Grilled Cheese Sandwiches®

I wanted to try something different this time, so after grabbing a wedge of sharp cheddar, I picked up a tiny hunk of blue stilton.

Let me just say that a high quality sharp cheddar makes a fine, fine sandwich. F.I.N.E. I loved it. Ninepointsomething on the Fabulous Grilled Cheese® scale.

Blue stilton, by itself, does NOT.

I opened the small package and was immediately floored by the smell of dairy barn. Not just manure, but the whole package. Manure, hay, pee, feed, farmers. If you've ever been in a dairy barn then you know what I am talking about.

That's all fine, though. I don't care about how something smells. I took a few bites of the pieces I was slicing up. OH. Man. It was good.

So, in addition to the five cheddar sandwiches I made, I also whipped up one with the blue stilton.

Ugh. About halfway through the sandwich I was overpowered by the taste. It was too much. I still have some, so I am going to mix it with a milder cheese. THAT, I think is key. We'll see.

Richmond Downtown

Took a short trip up to the City Hall Observation deck last week. It's a bummer that there isn't a better view of the river, but here's a few of my photos:

New Federal Courthouse


Capitol


The View South
That's the SunTrust building in the center


Old City Hall


The Tallest and Ugliest Building in Richmond


John Marshall House


The rest, if you are so inclined.

Valentines

A card my wife got. Not from me. I would never waste my money on something like that.

Fabulous Movie Review®

3:10 to Yuma
I love a good western. The problem is that they don't make many good westerns anymore. 3:10 to Yuma is a good western.

I wished for more of the Sergio Leone style though. Sweeping panoramas, close ups, and slow build up in tense moments, but, whatever, I get it, people can't pay attention that long anymore.

Christian Bale plays the lead character and he was great, as always (ever seen The Machinist?), but I wish his character had been more of an anti-hero.

Russell Crowe, who I never like, except in A Beautiful Mind (oh, yeah, and Gladiator (although, I don't think his performance made the movie in that one)), plays the antagonist. Not much to say since I don't like him. He did alright.

There were two other actors in this movie who I recognized but couldn't quite put my finger on where I had seen them.

This guy (My Name is Earl):









And this guy(Dodgeball):










The other good thing about this movie is that there is no damsel in distress, no love interest. Oh sure, the guy is married, but she isn't in danger. He doesn't have to rescue her. Her part in the movie is minor. He was more worried that his son would consider him a coward. He did make sure she would be financially taken care of though.

This review makes no sense, really. Here, let me sum it up all quick and dirty like: Compared to most westerns made since 1977, not including Unforgiven, this movie rocks. Compared to anything made between 1964 and 1976 starring Clint Eastwood/Henry Fonda/James Coburn or directed by Sergio Leone/Sam Peckinpah then it's a pretty good movie.

Gagknee's grade: B+

This Kinda Sucks

Yeah, I live in a Microsoft dominated world. Windows, .NET, Sql server, but the acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft kinda sucks.

I straddle the fence between Google and Yahoo. Yahoo Mail vs. Gmail. MyYahoo vs. whatever Google has (iGoogle). Flikr vs. PicasaWeb. I like Google search better than Yahoo, but Yahoo Maps has gotten a lot better. Etcetera, etcetera...

For me, its an even split between Yahoo and Google and what services of each I use. I fear Microsoft is going to come in and muck it all up.

A Whole Bunch of Crap Rolled into One Post

I know I won't get any sympathy from my northern friends but just when I thought spring had sprung the temperature here dropped a lot over the past 5 days:





















The silver maples have started to come alive, always a good sign of spring springing:



I've been trying to figure out where to put the shed I plan on building soon. I marked it out with sticks and leaves and it's 12 x 16. Here's the view from the kitchen window:



And from the upstairs bathroom:



I might rotate it 45 degrees counter clockwise. Don't know yet. I'm sure you care. Not.

I completed #19 on my Home Improvement list and even added a new outlet to the upstairs bathroom. Call it a honey-do list and I'll kill you. My wife couldn't care less about changing outlets and building a shed. My legs are killing me from crawling around in and hoisting myself up into the attic. I should make an Andy Improvement list. Item #1: Get into shape. Item #2: Stop huffing.

I also started #7: Paint the youngest boy's room. Kid was excited. What 3 year old gets excited about having his room painted? Here's the before picture:



Part of the deal is he gets a "big bed" when he is deemed "potty-trained." He's done well at it for the past few weeks, so pretty soon one of my two greatest parental dreams, no more diapers and self-bathing, will come true.

I managed to get one coat of paint on his walls Sunday afternoon, until my wife came home from a walk. A walk in which she got attacked by a dog. A doberweiler or a rottman. Actually, a rottweiler. I'm just making fun of her because she didn't know what it was. Perhaps I shouldn't make fun of her since she had to get 9 stitches and getting attacked is pretty traumatic. Item #3: Be more sensitive.





This was almost a month ago, but I built a cool layout with my son's GeoTrax:



I guess thats it for this bunch of crap. Hmm, it doesn't feel right if I don't complain about work.

Hmm. I hate writing stored procedures. Sorry, thats all I got.

There's a guy at work with the last name Loving. I'm dying to call him McLovin but since that movie came out last summer and I started here last Christmas, I'm sure that ship has sailed. Sad. I like to be on the cutting edge of nicknames. Not some washed up has been.

I Hate Roger Clemens

Yeah, yeah, I know. If you ask my kids, "hate" is a bad word, but this is a blog, and I don't have to be pretend not to hate things.

Here's an article I just discovered, take it with a grain of salt.

My two other favorite anti-Clemens articles ever:

Rocket failure: I love it

Is Clemens the Anti-Christ

I've always considered printing those two articles out and framing them. I think it's time to get off my duff and do it.

Why am I so concerned with Clemens all of a sudden? No reason. It's just a very slow off season.

Fabulous Movie Review®

Shoot 'Em Up
A no holds barred, take no prisoners, unapologetic, completely implausible and thoroughly enjoyable action movie.

Don't even try to believe that the impossible situations Clive Owen finds himself are evenly remotely possible.

Also stars Paul Giamatti, who I always used to get confused with this guy, as the henpecked bad guy.

Gagknee's grade: B

Voltage is like water pressure in a pipe

I'm replacing every outlet and switch in my house for two reasons, one, they are almond and I want white and second, because several of them were in this kind of condition:



This is the outlet that my fridge was plugged into. Its the worst one I've had. Two others looked okay, but disintegrated in my hand as soon as I pulled them out, and then there was the dryer outlet that almost caught on fire.

Here's a tip for all you house flippers out there, free of charge. Spend the extra buck fitty to replace any broken outlets. Heck, spend 20 and replace them ALL.

Snow.

My youngest was very excited to see snow. Too bad it was completely useless for anything you would ever normally use snow for. I didn't have to shovel it, so that's good.

Eerily Creepy or Creepily Eery

Remember this?

Almost a year later, and in a different house, the birds are back.





Here's a video I took and another one. I was indoors so you can't hear the birds squawking, just my kids breaking stuff.

As a sidenote, at least I don't have vultures.

Layoffs at Work

<ramble>

People wonder why employees aren't loyal to their companies anymore, and they especially like to point the finger at IT people, jumping from job to job, going to the highest bidder, but heaven forbid sales number drop during the previous quarter and a handful of "non-essential" people are sent packing. Like we couldn't ride out a few months of slow sales and keep a few people employed.

Yeah. Nothing dulls the new job shine like some timely sackings.

Nobody is loyal anymore and it works both ways. If in a year or two I am bored, loyalty won't even be a second thought in my mind.

I had a job once where the boss had to layoff people in order to stay afloat, he used his own money to cover our paychecks a few times, and come to find out from a third party later on, he wasn't even paying himself for long periods of time. Somehow, I don't think the owner of my current company is sweating anything out.

I'm going to get fired. Better not visit gagknee.com at work and have it get stuck in the internet sniffer.

I still like my job. I just get uber annoyed at the business of being employed. But I don't advocate any other system. Owners of companies are free to do as they please, they just can't complain when their employees leave for greener pastures.

</ramble>

Beards Are Cool

Best. Beard. Ever.

More American Gladiator

How fake is that hair attached to his skull cap?

I Smell Blood, I Smell Fear, and I'm Gonna Eat You

I love American Gladiators.

I've been pining for this staple of my high school years to come back to television, and now it has, maybe I can wean myself off of Ninja Warrior. Nah. Why would I want to do that?

I'd Like to Say....

Haha. But that would be crude.

It was all over the news this morning, that they suspected that this girl was still alive, and that she wasn't really missing.

Here's your link.

That "haha" was meant for the news channels, not for the girl, by the way. Because they took some idiots random speculation and ran with it. Not that anyone will call them on it.

I Am Not Always Angry

I like my new job.

After four weeks, with the new guy smell worn off, I have plenty of work to do, my boss appreciates us and isn't a colossal jerk, the work is interesting, coworkers are all nice, there are plenty of places to which to walk and also to eat, I make a lot more money, the commute is cut in half, and I don't have to do anything in VB6.

Life, at this moment in time, is good.

Now, if only I could wear jeans to work...

Because Baseball Writers Know Best

Whatever.

Why is it the BBWAA 'tards are the only people who get to vote on who gets into the Hall of Fame?

Yes. Jim Rice did not make it in again. He was 16 votes shy of the 75% that he needed.

Oh, check out the BBWAA website. You'll love it. Very cutting edge.