"Travels of the Incredible Hulk"

I've been working my way through the episodes of "The Incredible Hulk" on Netflix. (When Tara's not around) It quickly became apparent that they were just picking random places for the Hulk to go, really, if you assume they were going in chronological order.

Tonight I started plotting his travels. I'm only half way through the second season, that's as far as the map goes so far. For a while, I was getting google maps to follow roads, but it freaked out after about a dozen or so routes, and I ended up having to do straight lines instead. I also had to guess some of the places he went, since some of the episodes weren't exactly specific about it.

I'll keep the map updated as I watch, in case you are interested...


View Travels of "The Incredible Hulk" in a larger map

Blog books

I just made 4 pdf's of books from this blog, one per year. I did it at a site called sharedbook.com. They do electronic media to books, and have a blog interface. You put your blog address in, date ranges, and away you go. I like how it also imports comments for posts.

You can find the blog interface at blog2print.sharedbook.com. They will print and mail you a copy of your book, but it's kind of expensive, at least around here, where I can go up to Print Services on campus and get it done quite a bit cheaper. For $8, you can purchase a pdf of the thing, which is what I did.

The only thing I don't like about it is how it treats pictures you have uploaded, pushing them either to the right or the left, and shrinking them, but it is an attempt to reduce the number of pages the book is, so I guess it's ok, except for posts where I am posting a picture, saying something about it, then posting another, with a second caption, and so on. It gets a tiny bit lost in translation that way, but I really didn't have a good way to get a hard copy of my blog before this. (They have an export feature, but it's not exactly printer friendly.) I didn't pick high quality pictures for the 2009 blog book covers, and didn't notice until I placed my order, but that's how it goes sometimes...

Don't make me angry...

I just hulked out of a pair of jeans. They were an older pair, and the pocket start ripping this afternoon. I didn't know where the crunching sound was coming from every time I sat on the couch, turns out it was coming from me...

I leaned over to get something out from the back of a cupboard drawer, so the thing would close. Pocket ripped again, this time I figured it out.

What to do with a partially ripped pair of jeans? Go in the back room, and finish the job. Adam really enjoyed the Hulk imitation, he's been watching episodes of "The Incredible Hulk" with me lately. Lily wasn't so sure...

Long weekend

I've been off for a couple of days. Comes from working all last weekend. Tomorrow I'll spend some time in the morning wrestling Adam into his church clothes, and the afternoon at church. Monday I will either a) go to work, or b) sit on the couch all day, moving only to brush crumbs off my shirt. It's a coin toss at this point.

Some long weekend thoughts:

1. I never again want to hear my retirement/health/life insurance company tell me they are doing something "to better serve me". It always ends up having some sort of catch in the end. My current favorite is 'justifying' posts to my flexible spending account.
2. I found some interesting books at the library using the "Emma method" of finding books to check out. (Involves wandering semi-aimlessly until something jumps out at you.) The book I am reading is called "Batman and Philosophy", where a bunch of people show you how philosophy relates to real life - by using examples from fiction. I guess that makes sense. They have a whole series of these books. More on that later. My favorite all time philosophy moment? Our single's ward Bishop was a philosophy professor. I think he liked maintaining an even keel. When Tara and I told him we were engaged, there was a brief look of sudden shock, then he caught it and told us he didn't even know we were dating. We had him there for a second. The look on his face was priceless.
   
3. Those kids of ours can pound through all kinds of laundry. I folded a lot of laundry. I think I folded some of it several times, but maybe it was just blurred vision from the quantity.
4. NBC piles a lot of commercials into their Olympic coverage. We've been recording them and getting to them later. I think we are three days behind right now. It's nice being able to forward through all the advertisements. I watched some of the online coverage during the Summer Olympics, but I haven't had the time this time, and it was kind of weird watching some of it without commentary. Maybe it was just the rowing...
   
5. Speaking of of TV, there is no way to insert yourself in the viewing choices in this house in the mornings. Yesterday morning I tried stopping the 'shows' at 10am in favor of Olympic recordings. There was outrage. I ended up cleaning my room. Shows where I stand around here, I guess.
6. The truck is dying. I like to say it acts funny every time I fill up at Sinclair, and it does, but I think it's caught something terminal. I'm gonna have to start walking to work again sometime in the next 8 months.
7. Tara's Christmas present should be done, say, around Thanksgiving. Or something.
   
8. I need to have a little talk with the people that live behind us now. I don't understand why some houses always seem to attract the same kinds of renters. I don't spend a lot of time in the back yard during the Winter, I was last back there about 6 weeks ago. I found a little airline vodka bottle and another bottle in the yard, seemingly tossed over the fence. Today I took some block from the front porch to the backyard. (I am going to do some more work on my retaining wall this Spring.) I found all kinds of things in the yard, I guess tossed over the fence: Another airline vodka bottle, a cinder block, a chewing tobacco can, a large bottle of hand soap, and a used tiki torch. Seemed like an odd combination of things. Must have been an interesting party. Or whoever was working on the place before the current tenants moved in. Either way, they need to knock it off.
9. Kaylynn called Tara last night saying she was surprised to hear that Tara was pregnant. I thought everyone knew, except for maybe Missy, who seems to have dropped out of sight completely. I guess I forgot to tell Drew and Kaylynn. She said 'Grisly Adam' said something about maybe coming out here again after Tara had another baby. Kaylynn thought that was a weird comment. Anson spent a little time over here yesterday playing with the girls, when I took him home, Kate asked to ride with us, so she could say hi to them. Turns out it was a trick to get over there and ask if she could spend the night over there. Anyway, Kate told Kaylynn that Tara was pregnant. Oh - and by the way - in case someone hasn't heard - Tara's expecting...
10. Wouldn't it be funny if Shaun White was really bald, and all that hair was really a wig? "Flying Tomato" and all...
11. It's kind of nice having your coat break towards the end of the Winter, rather than finding it broken when you pull it out in the beginning of the season. The zipper on my coat recently fell to pieces, and it got a little colder here again. Coats were 60% off at the store we went to, found a nice one for $35. It's a little cooler in the sleeves, but seems like a pretty good coat.
    
12. I need to figure out a way to be able to play the Wii when people are watching TV. I have games to finish. And I got Tara a set of "Emma" DVDs for Valentine's day, I'm going to need something to do when she's watching those. Maybe a smaller second TV. There's deals online all the time.
    
13. Yesterday afternoon - kids taking naps, Tara taking naps - what do I do? Watch "The Incredible Hulk". Don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.
14. I've been working on my Farmville farm. Mostly just trying to complete the collections, work on the ribbons, and get those mastery signs. Aunt Peggy wanted to know what the deal was with all the rice, she figured it was something to do with food storage, but it was all about the mastery sign. I know, exciting life...
15. NASA astronauts have a twitter feed now. From space. They've been posting some interesting photos. NASA_Astronauts, if you are interested.
16. I'm a true "Bebbled" master. It's a Droid thing.
17. Someday I need to finish painting this place. Maybe not incredibly soon. (See #9)
18. I was thinking about Watergate while making pancakes this morning. I don't remember why any more. Is there something pancakes has to do with the Watergate scandal?
19. Our current Wellness program thing ends this weekend. We were supposed to set goals for weight, nutrition, and exercise, and track how we did for six weeks. I did ok for the first four weeks, ended up slacking off on all three counts for the last two. (Working 52 hours one week and 46 the next had something to do with it.) On Monday, they sent an email saying we didn't have to actually reach all the goals to qualify for the $25, just have tracked how we did. This, of course, totally demotivated me for the rest of the week. Hurray for setting the bar low, or something like that. The next one is the annual fruit and veggie challenge. That one's always cake, but not literally.
20. I've decided I don't have a use for Google Buzz. There are already plenty of other ways to be connected, I didn't need another one, and it doesn't really do anything different or special, as far as I can tell. I was initially excited about it's relation to Google Maps, where you could make posts for a restaurant or store you visit, and have some sort of ongoing posts about those places. It would be nice to have the Buzz about a good restaurant (or bad) right there on the map. Turns out the posts on the maps are transient, disappearing after a while, as far as I can tell. (Not sure what the interval is, or the criteria.) Buzz was someone's 20% time, right? Why not deploy it for the Maps application first, and make the posts last longer? Oh well.
    

Clearly I haven't kept myself busy enough. Lots of TV involved. Might be time to go back to work, where I can cause real trouble.

Restaurant Review

Wingnutz
Orem Utah

Drew got a bead today on a new wing place up in Orem, we went today for lunch to check it out. When we got there at quarter to noon, the place was empty. We thought this wasn't a good sign. They don't carry Diet Dr. Pepper. They bake their wings instead of frying. All interesting choices. I suppose it's the 'healthy' way to eat wings, but who's really in it for their health, anyway? All not great signs...

Anyway, they had about 18 different wing flavors you could choose from, I choose "hot". I figured baked wings could still be crispy if they dried them out enough and baked them at the right temperature, I've seen Alton Brown do it, but he's no expert on wings, either.

Anyway, the wings came, and they were ok. The texture was sort of like the texture of wings you get at the bottom of a box of wings, the ones you get to that have been steamed from all the ones on top of them for 45 minutes, and you've already eaten 20 of them, so you should have stopped already. Good wings, just not quite the right texture of the skin. (The really good wings are crispy on the outside, if you didn't know.) Added to that was the taste, they were plenty hot, but the flavor was different. Or at least a bit different than what I would expect from a traditional "hot" chicken wing. I think they used too much cayenne pepper, or paprika, or something along those lines, plenty hot, just too much seasoning. I still ate mine.

Long story short - WingNutz - don't go expecting an authentic wing, but it's good enough, especially around here. The wings are a little bit expensive, but they are plenty big to make up for the cost. The place was packed when we got done, they had a pretty good lunch rush today it looks like, and that was during quite a bit of snow that was falling. (But not sticking.)

Badly in need of a haircut - AKA "When brimming with confidence meets lack of skill"

My hair was too long. I was in full 'helmet hair' mode. I lay down on the pillow at night, and my hair covered my ears, kept my head propped up, and started driving me crazy. I had to loosen the straps on my bipap, the hair was pushing the nose pillows up into my brain at night.

45 minutes to wait for a haircut at the haircut place. Too long for me. How hard can a haircut be? We have clippers. I've watched people cut my hair all my life...

I warmed up on Adam, who also needed a haircut. Tara helped with that one, trying to even things up. His hair will grow back. He handles my taking clippers to his head pretty good, no fussing. I gave him a mirror to watch today, which he enjoyed.

Then Tara left me to my own devices. I did the sides first, which was the easier part of cutting the hair, and I thought I did a good job. I thought the clippers were getting angry from being too hot so I took a break. When I came back to it, I dove into the top, and for some reason it was cutting kind of crooked. Turns out the clippers were in the process of falling apart. Before I realized what was happening, large sections of the top of my head were shorter than I wanted to get it. And the clippers fell apart.

I got a screwdriver, put the things back together, and shaved the head. It will grow back.

Restaurant Review

Ruby River
Provo

It's been a long time since I've been to Ruby River, the restaurant has not really changed in years, except for a couple of things. First, there are less tables and more booths than they used to have. This is a nice change, I think. Booths are nice. The second change I might not have discovered, had I not had a gift certificate and been really hungry. They used to have a porterhouse steak on their dinner menu, but you could order it for lunch if you asked nicely. I was plenty hungry, and went in fully intending to order the porterhouse tonight, but they don't do a porterhouse anymore. Oh well. I got a 16 ounce New York strip, which was plenty tasty, and for once in my life, I took half home. It'll make a nice little lunch tomorrow.

We ordered a shrimp cocktail for Tara, and a Onion blossom, the onion was really hot and pretty greasy. Tara really liked the cocktail sauce that came with her shrimp. Both ordered soups with our meal as sides, the waitress eventually came out and asked us if we wanted the soups, Tara also had a salad that came. Well after the soup and salad was gone, the waitress came back and said she thought our entrees were almost ready. A little bit later, she came back and said the same thing. A little while later, she came back and said they had lost our ticket, found it, and were really working on our meal that time. She looked a little worried about it. I had already had four glasses of Dr. Pepper by then, didn't realize we had been there for an hour.

The manager brought our food back, waited to make sure it was ok, and was fairly attentive. I thought that was nice. My steak was very good, and the fries on the side were super hot. Tara had the pork chops, which she seemed to enjoy.

When the waitress brought the bill, the manager had comped the shrimp cocktail. Very nice of him. Add that to the gift certificate I used, and it was a very, very good meal for the price we paid.

All in all, the food is still as good as it ever has been, the restaurant is nicer than is used to be with more booths and less tables, and there's very little wait to get in on a Thursday night. Not a bad deal at all.

Dear Google

I know you are excited about unleashing Buzz to the world, but do you always have to destablize your chat services when we start patching our servers? I'm just saying...

The award winning John Payne

We have a meeting every Tuesday here, yesterday Sorrel announced that he invited the CIO and assistant CIO to our meeting today. We couldn't get out of him why.

Today before the meeting, he reminded John Peterson that they were coming and he needed to be on time. When I got there, there was some random HR dude sitting there, then a department HR lady came in with Kelly (assistant CIO). I figured they were there to give John Peterson an award of some sort. We have an initiative here for administrative employees called the "Staff and Administrative Employee Recognition Awards", given to people for demonstrating one of our key values...

After the meeting started, Kelly got up to announce that I got an award for demonstrating 'Competency'. This surprised me. Sorrel had it disguised in plain sight very well. It turns out that the head of the library IT department nominated me in December. (Thanks Grant!)

Kelly told a story about being in Buffalo when I was little helping Dad with some Honcho programs. He said he ate dinner with us one night, and as a little kid, I was just as tenacious as I am now. I know how I might deserve the label now, but what was I doing at the dinner all those years ago? This merits further research.



Anyway, the award comes with this gyroscope clock, a $100 bill, and $100 in restaurant gift certificates. Not a bad deal at all. I have long said that if our department really wanted to thank us, they should pony up free snacks, so I took the $100 bill to Costco and got snacks for our team. Free snacks - Not a bad day after all.

I have to go now, because I might have to give the award back if I can't get this broken server fixed...

Happy Birthday, Boy Scouts of America

From what I hear, today is the 100th anniversary of the Bot Scouts of America. I've been thinking for a little bit about what to say about it. I went down to the basement tonight and dug out my old merit badge sash, pictured here.

I used to think this was a bunch of them, but it doesn't look like so many looking at them now.

I used to work at a scout camp during the summer. I earned a number of these there (like the 'reptile study' merit badge), but a bunch of them I earned with my troop. My Dad was the Scoutmaster, which was really nice, and he let us pick whatever merit badge we wanted to work on. (When we wanted to do the 'Animal Science' merit badge, we ended up at a dairy farm, the farmer talked to us about homogenization, pasteurization, and showed us the tool he used to castrate the bulls. I still remember all that. Very small rubber bands, if you must know...)

I really liked doing merit badges of different topics. It let me pick an interesting topic and learn lots about it. I guess I still do that, really. I'm not sure I'd have those skills today without the Boy Scouts. I also wouldn't have bought all the girls in my singles ward orchids that one year if it weren't for Scouts, either, but that's another story.

The merit badges I earned while a Boy Scout:

First Aid, Basketry, Leatherwork, Swimming, Lifesaving, Citizenship in the Nation, Art, Soil and Water Conservation, Environmental Science, Mammal Study, Computers, Citizenship in the Community, Camping, Electricity, Electronics, Reading, Orienteering, Citizenship in the World, Archery, Weather, Cooking, Reptile Study, Safety, Personal Management, Communications, Sports, Scholarship, Genealogy, Personal Fitness, Fish and Wildlife Management, Wilderness Survival, Wood Carving, Astronomy, Painting, Pioneering, Animal Science, Music, Dentistry, Pets, and Chemistry.

Game Time

Settlers of Catan

Tara and I played Settlers of Catan tonight. After about a half hour or so, I was pretty sure that she was headed down the path of losing the game, I didn't want to say anything about it. She ended up pinned to two desert squares, and didn't know that you couldn't directly tie a road to a ship. I was one point away from winning, and she had 4 points to go.

Turns out she was just playing Possum. (Or is it Opossum? Firefox seems to like both spellings...) She had two point cards, grabbed the longest road, and won the game. She was just messing with me. Maybe it cuts down on the trash talk when I win...

Spending 'spree'

We have a wellness program at work that does little health challenges through the year. A couple of years ago, they started offering rebates on your health insurance if you did the challenges. Last year they expanded it to spouses. This means we had the chance to get $400 back from them if we did it all. Tara did I all, I was a slacker.

Last week, Tara got a check for $200, I got one for $125.

One of the guys at work has been eating soups from a crockpot for the last month or so. Sounded like a good idea to me, so with part of my money, I got two 1.5 quart crock pots. I took one base to work, and left one base at home. 1.5 quarts of food is kind of a lot, especially for lunch. I've been using one of the crocks to make food the night before, then in the morning, I take half in one crock, and leave the other half at home for Tara. So far, so good. We had taco stew, meat and potatoes, and chili from the crock pots this week. I've got plans for this next week, so be pretty good.

Today I bought a new electric fryer and a rice cooker. We used the rice cooker tonight. It's got a delay timer on it, and settings for white rice, brown rice, and 'quick rice'. They also have a steamer basket for steaming food in the thing. We'll have to try that at some point.

The fryer will get a workout tomorrow at Drew's house. It's got a square basket, which I think I will like over the old round mixer we used to have.

Put those things with Tara's as of yet unnamed Valentine's present, and I've spent my windfall.

Tara's been working through her money this weekend, and got called on it by Visa Fraud Prevention. They called this afternoon to ask her what she was doing. They've got my information on the card, not hers, so I think she got close to having her card suspended, but they eventually started communicating and she got to keep going. I think she's almost done at this point...

Too much shopping for me, I'm done for the month.

Book Review

Batman: No Man's Land
A Novel by Greg Rucka

A number of years ago, DC Comics ran a thing where Gotham City had a huge earthquake. The President of the US decided to not repair the place, just cut it off from everything and declare it "No Man's Land".

This book writes about the year Gotham spent as No Man's Land, detailing Batman and his friends efforts to keep the place in one piece.

I liked the book. I never read the five issue comic series when they did this back in the day, so I don't know how they did it in the comics, but in the book, they had Oracle (the former Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon's daughter) writing little journal entries to her Dad that she planned to eventually give to him. This usually moved the story along pretty well, then the author went back to the action.

In the end, it all worked out well, mostly, for the heroes at least. I liked the way the author wrote the story. He didn't bother trying to insult anyone by telling every character's backstory, he just told the story and assuming you knew who the characters were and what they were about.

Remembering the old 'unskilled' days of my youth...

I went to Little Caesers tonight to get pizzas for the girls, and the place was getting slammed! Bold italics slammed. There were about 15 people in front of me, people coming in behind, and it looked like they had the oven chocked full of pizzas. I didn't recognize what was happening at the time, but as I came in, one employee was getting a cart full of their pizza pans from the place where they box the pizzas up.

Turns out they had just run out of premade pizzas and prepressed dough. Production had just slowed way down. The employees were working frantically. It reminded me of working at Wendy's during High School for some reason.

Most of the time, I worked the grill. I kind of preferred it, because I didn't have to talk to customers, I just went to town on burgers, fries, chicken, that sort of thing. One of my favorite times was when a busload of people stopped in for a visit. Mad crazy burger making. And fries.

The bonus was a couple of the managers always let us munch on the spoils (or leftovers, or overages, or whatever you call them) after the store closed, at least on nights when we got slammed. Nothing like a spicy chicken sandwich and a giant 'fry ball' after a long night of burger flipping. (Those tasty, tasty, giant fry balls...)

Finally figured out how to get the boy to start walking

I finally figured out how to get Adam to walk tonight. I had some chips out, he was staning next to me eating them. Then I started holding them out with my hand way in front of him, he would step out to get it. Then I got a stick and some string, and the boy "will walk for chips".

This video is the last one, he was starting to get a little ticked off, but he still goes out there for the chip. A couple of days, and we should have him moving just fine, assuming we don't run out of chips...

Less computer time for kids

Some of the girls have been a little computer crazy lately. Most mornings I come in and Ruth is on the computer playing games. I'm not sure some mornings how long she has been at it.

The other day I got tired of listening to them fight over the computer all the time, and not listing to us. I changed the password to their account on the computer. That seems to work better than anything else. (We tried turning the thing off, but they just turn it back on...)

Anyhow, no fighting over the computer the last couple of days. Not too much whining about it, either, although they might have just gotten it all out of their systems before I came home today.

Adam's up tonight, about 20 minutes ago got quiet over by the computer desk. The boy won't walk, but when I went to see what he was doing, he was standing up at the computer desk, using the mouse trying to get the computer to work. That's my boy. I was too slow to get a picture, he jumped down when I asked him what he was doing.