Tin Foil Soldier

I have this version of the song and really like it YouTube - Adrima-Discoland but Kevin got a mix from a friend that had a happy hardcore version like this Discoland

I also like 2 Vibez - Always (Be Mine)

I may sing all of these songs extremely loudly in my car (if I had a drivable car) on the way too and from work. So what if I can’t sing, just turn the music up louder!

SOS: the signal that has saved thousands turns 100 - Times Online
In the past century, “SOS” has become a firm part of popular culture used in everything from DIY programme titles to Abba hits. But it began life in a far more serious setting after being adopted by the international community on July 1, 1908, as the globally recognised distress signal for ships at sea.

nothing more to say.
via BB

Tin Foil Soldier » Blog Archive » VW Jetta

So I called again yesterday and they still had no word. Andy said he would call when they got a price worked up.

I called after I got out of the gym and after 10 minutes of waiting for the tech to find / figure out the paperwork Andy came back and said that it would be 540$+tax. Apparently only the engine mount bolt, engine mount bracket, and single use torque bolts needs to be replaced and everything else is fine. When they kept telling me that insurance needed to be contacted, I had visions of the exhaust system being trashed, the transmission ruined, etc. Apparently not. They still want to pull the oil pan or something and make sure its okay though?

He still doesn’t want to cover it under warranty but “his boss will look at it to verify” even though “he is sure he will say no.”

It still seems strange that the engine mount could break without damaging anything else… I will definitely want to see the bolt that snapped before I pay anybody anything.

so…

Thursday night I was driving down the road after having picked a friend up, we were gonna go start drinking. We were headed to a friends house but wanted to bring some beer along. Pulled out of a stop light, going probably 25mph and went over a tiny bump in the road. Then the engine started sounding funny, the exhaust wasn’t quite like it normally is. I pulled into the gas station we were going to to get beer and while Jake went inside I looked the car over. Wheels were fine, looked in engine compartment, looked okay. Looked underneath and saw a shield pressed down. Pressed on it and realized that the ENGINE is the reason the shield is down.

Called VW warranty road side service and they sent someone out. Jake and I sat at a gas station eating ice cream for 45 minutes waiting for the tow truck driver.

Next day they tow it from storage to the dealership. Dorschel calls me to say they have the car, whats the problem. I tell them what happened and I am completely honest in that I went over a tiny bump and it happened. They are gonna know something happened and if I tell them the truth that it was a negligible interruption in the pavement at 25mph maybe they will believe me that I wasn’t trying to jump the car or something.

I call them at the end of the day. They say the warranty isn’t going to cover it because it is my fault that the engine mount bolt snapped. They will know more on Monday but they want to get my insurance involved.

So its Monday. They still haven’t fully even figured out what is wrong, what needs to be done, and how much it will cost. They still don’t think it should be covered by my warranty so I was like, “is it acceptable for the car to just fall apart while driving down the road?” The service manager was going to talk to his boss or something and call me back. That was probably 45 minutes ago.

I also called the dealer who sold me the car to let him know the situation and that I wasn’t exactly happy.

Right now, I have no car, no idea what all is wrong with it, and no idea what it will take to get it fixed.

Joe. My. God.: Schwarzenegger On Meet The Press
MR. BROKAW: You have a lot of propositions on the ballot again this fall. One of them would mean a constitutional ban on gay marriages. Do you support that?
GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I think the Supreme Court made a decision there. It was apparently unconstitutional to stop anyone from getting married. It’s like 1948, the interracial marriage, when the Supreme Court of California has, you know, decided it was unconstitutional and then later on the Supreme Court of the United States followed, I think 10 or 12 years later. So I think it is, it’s good that California lead–is leading in this way. I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. But at the same time I think that my, you know, belief, I don’t want to force on anyone else, so I think we should stay with the decision of the Supreme Court and move forward. There are so many other more important issues that we have to address in California.

I think Schwarzenegger has done something that a lot of politicians can’t seem to do; separate their personal beliefs from law. So what if he doesn’t personally think that two men should get married; it has been found unconstitutional to ban someone from getting married, end of story.

full Meet The Press interview

If the internets start to bore you, here are some sites that keep me entertained lately.

passive-aggressive (and just plain aggressive) notes — a little bit funny ha-ha, a little bit, you know, “funny”
The title pretty much sums it up

FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments
hilarious pictures

Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
Silly cats and their cheezburgers

The Daily Show Full Episode | Thursday Jun 26 2008 | Comedy Central

Did you know that you can watch entire episodes of TV shows on the Internet? You can. Kevin is watching Lost (waste of time). I am watching the more worthy “Daily Show” and it is hilarious. This doesn’t go entirely against my “I don’t like to watch blog videos” post, because I just put the show on as background audio. You generally don’t need to watch the show to get the full effect of the funny.

I haven’t posted any recipes in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been baking.

The bananas that Kevin bought had been sitting in the fruit basket for a while and we decided that last night was do or die night.

Banana Espresso Cookies

• 4 ripe bananas (or overripe)
• 3 tb molasses
• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup soy nut butter
• 1 cup flour (I used whole wheat)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 cups oats
• forgot these fresh grated nutmeg, cinnamon, all spice, ginger
• 1/2-3/4 cup chocolate espresso chips
• 1/2-3/4 c dried banana slices, broke into bits (1/2″ pieces?)

Put the bananas in the mixer and mash. Let set for a bit to develop the sugars or something.
Add the molasses to make the cookies a bit darker and add that wonderful flavor.
put in the stick of butter and sugar, blend well.
Add the egg and soy nut butter, mix again.
Add the flour, baking soda, and oats, mixing to incorporate.
Add the espresso chips and the banana pieces.

Pipe/spoon/whatever onto a pan.

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes

The cookies came out nice and soft.  They spread out a little and puff up just the right amount.

I like to make cookies, but I hate portioning them out onto the pan. Thick dough / runny dough / whatever, I don’t like doing it. This dough had a batter like consistency so I decided that I was going to just pipe them onto the pan. I took the cookie batter and put it into a 1 gallon zip top bag. Cut on of the corners off so that the hole is about 1″ in diameter and there ya go. Piping the cookies onto the sheets is not only so much faster, its kinda fun as well. I have also piped cupcakes / muffins into their papers because its so much easier to do quickly and accurately.

I’ll be honest. I read the internet at work. My job occasionally has downtime and when it does no one is being harmed by a quick blog read or blog post.

Lots of blogs are starting to get video posts, and I don’t approve. BoingBoing TV or whatever? I don’t think I have ever watched an episode, even at home. In fact, I started reading boingboing less when they moved to the videos because now I need to watch the video to get the interesting content.

Sure, I make exceptions for the occasional video post like Craig’s 1000th post on Puntabulous but it just doesn’t fit into my internetting time to have to watch tons of video just to get transitory tidbits of information like BB videos.

Granted, I also watch videos of awesome stuff on Hack-A-Day because some of that stuff is just so cool, like the air hockey robot that can calculate where the puck will be even after multiple bounces.

On the topic of NSFW blogs, sometimes there are blogs that I like to read that for some reason insist on throwing in pictures of barely dressed men. Granted, I enjoy scantily clad men as much as the next gay, but if I am reading a political blog, it should probably contain less of the scantily clad men and more of the political commentary. If I wanted to see scantily clad men, there websites set up entirely for that purpose. I don’t really understand why a gay blog has to have hot guys every couple posts. Most of them are interesting enough to read without the beef, and the guys aren’t enough to make up for the lack of content.

As a side note, this post took more than 5 hours to write, because real work kept interrupting my internetting / blogging

George Carlin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On June 22, 2008, Carlin was admitted to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California complaining of chest pain. He died later that day at 5:55 p.m. PDT of heart failure at the age of 71.

George Carlin was pretty damn funny.

Seven words you can’t say on TV (wow he looks young)((Obviously NSFW))

Via Towelroad

Joe. My. God.: Maine LGBT Rights Repeal Bid Fails
A conservative Christian group has given up its attempt to mount a referendum drive to wipe out all protections for LGBT citizens in Maine. The Christian Civic League of Maine in an e-mail to its supporters said that it was giving up because it has “neither enough funds nor enough volunteer support to continue the effort.”

The proposal would have banned same-sex marriage and civil unions, wipe out existing laws giving limited rights to gay and lesbian couples, removed LGBT protections under the state’s Human Rights Act, and would remove funding from the Attorney General’s Office to investigate discrimination claims.

I guess it is just too much work being that evil.

I’m Voting Republican

via JMG

Generate Design | Sommelier Wine Glasses by Maxim Vel?ovský
Somewhere between college and careers, our standards of drinking cups drastically changed.

A bit of fancy cropping and it almost looks like a “normal” cup. Granted, I have always hated plastic cups of any kinds, but especially non-disposable ones; I can’t stand using them. I like my beverages in a nice glass. Short juice cups, tall tea glasses, pyrex beaker glasses, whatever; but it should be made of clear or frosted glass. Ceramic is also acceptable for coffee mugs.

Anyway, check out these awesome wine glasses. Buy me some even

Tab Mix Plus Dev-Build 0.3.6.X-Tab Mix Plus
You will need the dev build to use Tab Mix Plus in Firefox 3 for now.

Rows of tabs are something that should be an option without an add-on, but that’s what we have TMP for.

My settings (under Tools, Tab Mix Plus Options, Display) are
Tab Bar

• When tabs don’t fit width: Multi-row
• Max rows = 7
• uncheck all “Show:” boxes
• Hide the tab bar when I only have one tab

and for Tab

• Tab Width: 180-200
• Highlight: unread tabs
• Show: Nothing checked

I think I use the defaults for just about everything else except for

Mouse-> Mouse Clicking-> Middle-Click

• on a tab: closes the tab
• on the tabbar: Reopens the closed tab

Spread Firefox | Download Day 2008

They are trying to get the world record for most software downloads in 24 hours starting at 1pm when Firefox 3 is released.

I am running RC2 now, and it is so fast and stable.

Clicking this in the next 42 minutes will result in the FF2 page, wait until after 1 and then get the best browser there is.

While that site is down, use this URL http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?from=getfirefox