Author Archives: The500footBuddha

Inner City Dogs

I think as long as I’ve lived and no matter where I have lived there have always been stray dogs wandering about that occasionally end up in your yard. Typically I would say that this is a rare and very much uninvited event, because dogs carry disease, could bite you, and can even damage your property. Having been in Akron for two years now I have seen my fair share of stray dogs.

We had one dog that followed Patty home. She asked if she could keep it, and I said no. Later we found out that the dog belonged to a family a few houses down. The dog came loose again a few times. They were really horrible at taking care of the dog and eventually sold it to some other family.

We had another dog that was down the street for the longest time and when the kids would walk that way to see any of their friends the dog would run up to them and sort of block their path. They were afraid of that dog, so that was rather unpleasant. I never personally saw the dog, and when I’d walk with the kids it never came out.

There was one dog that used to pace up and down the street. There have been several dogs that stopped traffic crossing the street. This all brings us to this dog. This dog apparently wandered into our backyard and wouldn’t leave. He apparently tried getting inside and kept everyone trapped inside the house for a while. I was sleeping so I didn’t take this picture or see any of this.

Grandma called the police who showed up and tried coaxing the dog into the car. My Grandma kept calling this dog a pit bull. I don’t know if it is or not, but it doesn’t look like it. I don’t know that much about dogs though. The owner drove past just in time to claim his dog and so this story has sort of a happy ending. I hope he takes better care of his dog this time.

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Red Controllers

The limited edition red Xbox 360 controller is finally in stores. I thought we were getting a green one as well, and while I had no real intention on getting it, I still thought it would be there. Turns out, according to the clerk at GameStop, that the green controller had an “improved d-pad” for Europeans, because apparently that’s how they play soccer games. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and to be honest I have no intention on looking it up. It seems plausible enough explanation.

I think everyone should get one. I mean, look at this thing. It’s read with black trim, and not even the black controller has black trim. I wish the blue controller had black trim. It’s pretty neat looking.

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Thursday WoW Update

I said I’d bring them back, so here they are. There has been some moving around and some other things going on. Some day this section might be larger, because more people might move here. I know that Andrew and Anthony have been being prodded to at least start new characters on this server. Some day this section might be for an entirely different game, since there seems to be a lot of interest in the Warhammer game. For now this is where we are.

I’ll start with Remana who hasn’t changed a great deal since I stopped doing these updates about a month ago. I’m sure there will be a renewed interest now that I’m coming back.

Grotesk should be seeing some sort of play, but he never liked the character so it’s going to be pretty stagnant. I don’t know if I can convince him to play it anymore, but it would be nice to have a priest in the group. As part of a compromise, and since you can move characters from PvE servers to PvP now, he moved Tsugutoshi and he’ll actually play this character.

Steakems shot up to level 36, and I really thought after he passed my two alts that he was going to climb all the way to 60. Now he’s having car trouble and some other not so fun stuff is going on and I don’t know what’s going to happen with this character. I’ve even heard him say that he might be putting WoW on hold for awhile until he gets it all straightened out. Who knows. Have to wait and see I suppose.

Rombus has actually been playing ever since they convinced me not to go. I know this, because when I had that get together he was playing this character and had Tsugutoshi run him through Scarlet Monastery. I think when I stopped the updates he was only in the 20’s, so this is of course an improvement. I can actually run through the stuff he’s doing with my alts. Just as soon as I find time to be on when he is.

Well that was a heck of an update. Maybe some day I’ll figure out how to get a page going for just these updates or something. I don’t know. Lot of ideas.

Pictures

A big thanks goes out to Rick who fixed a missing page.php file that was needed in order to complete the Pictures section of this website, which you can find the link for at the top right there. I made all the Polaroid looking pictures and basically did it myself, since I was extremely unhappy with all the plugin’s and the widgets that were available.

It’s now complete and you can find all the pictures of my bike rides and the children’s birthday’s from the posts that are unfortunately gone, but thank goodness I still have the pictures.  I plan on continuing to put pictures there, but mostly I intend to keep it family and family events only.

Patty’s Room 2.0

The carpet was going to need to be pulled out of her room anyway, so this was going to happen one way or another. I’m really thankful Renee was here to help. She did an amazing amount of work on it, and honestly I don’t believe that if left up to me the project would have been done today.

All the carpet got pulled up, the cleaning supplies were purchased and used, and a mat was bought for the middle of the room just so it’s not all wood. Honestly the wood underneath that mat is a bit stained and weird looking, so the mat is really a necessity.

The television has been replaced as well. She isn’t here, because she is at her Mom’s this weekend, so as soon as she comes home she is going to find all this.

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Awesome Night

I had a pretty awesome night. I had a lot of friends over, and one new person I had never met before. Her name is Kate, I think? I messaged everyone this morning to find out her name, because honestly I forgot, and it turns out nobody else remembers either. So, I’ll just call her Kate for right now, and if I’m wrong I’ll be corrected later.

On to who was here. Melissa and Rick came up from Columbus. They picked up Tim for me. Tim brought Rock Band 2 and his real guitar and amp. Andrew came over with Kate, who is a friend of his from World of Warcraft. Anthony showed up. Jo came with his laptop and assorted gadgets. Derek came with his real guitar and amp as well. Renee was here, left for bowling, and came back.

Rick and Jo tried to fix Patty’s television. I’m glad they tried, I just wish it had been successful. They also played World of Warcraft together. It seems like people pair up at these things. Everyone picks someone to do everything with.

With this many people I had to get creative with the parking. I parked Derek’s car in the driveway of the abandoned house across the street. I ended up putting Anthony’s car in the front yard. I had to pull the car into the back yard, then pull the van up into that spot, move Melissa’s car back, move the van to that spot, and then move my car back to where it was.

We all played Rock Band. That used to be the whole reason we all got together and now it’s just something else to do. I noticed Tim, Anthony, and even myself just jumping on and playing some solo when everyone else was doing something else.

Derek and Tim spent a lot of time watching Youtube and playing guitar. I guess Tim was teaching Derek some stuff. They were watching Youtube video’s of other people playing guitar. They also had some program for learning guitar on there, but I don’t really remember what it was.

Andrew and Kate left, and we all went to Chinese. It was a great idea. We all went through what Chinese sign we are on the place mat. Then we all laughed about how entirely inaccurate it was, which of course is inherently insulting. Anthony’s sign said he was “intelligent” and mine was that I was “articulate”. It’s good fun. We named the chicken on a stick “Bob”, because we don’t believe it was really chicken and Bob is the homeless guy that showed up to my door a few weeks ago and was looking for a handout. I don’t think anyone’s drink got tampered with. We all ate a ton of food and continued the party.

There was a lot of trading and the purchasing of objects. Jo bought an external CD-ROM thing from Rick, I got mobile AIM from Jo, and Andrew finally got his assorted bag of computer parts that he left at a LAN about a month ago back.

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Car Warranty

I took the car into Serpentini today, because the front speakers weren’t working. It turns out the radio is to blame and they will be ordering me a new one, which should arrive within a week. It’s covered under my warranty, so there really isn’t too much of a problem.

A Full Driveway

I had quite a few friends over last night. We all came together to play Rock Band 2. Anthony (Codex) brought Andrew (Trewr). I had to pick up Tim, so I got a chance to use the GPS on my phone. Renee was holding it and it worked like a charm. It said “destination arrived” when we were exactly in front of his house. I know that’s what it is supposed to do, but I am always surprised when things work that way. Derek came over after work.

We played Rock Band 2 almost the entire night. There are so many songs to choose from. We ended up trying to do every song that everyone had to do. Everyone has a song some where in that game that they just have to do. Derek has to do a Coheed and Cambria song. Anthony had to do a Disturbed song. I needed to do something from the early 90’s. Jo doesn’t even play and he needed us to do “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran.

It was some fun. We had plenty to eat. We had pizza, beer, and chips. I ordered the pizza using Google 411, which is a free service where you call the number and you put in the zip code where you are and then you can ask for a specific business or you can get suggestions by saying something like “pizza”. It’s pretty neat I think everyone should try it just for fun. I know that there are new home phones that are coming out that actually have a button for the Google 411.

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Rock Band 2

Jo, Tim, Trewr, and Codex all came over to play Rock Band 2. They are supposed to come over tomorrow as well. I’m pretty impressed with it, but it seems that they changed a lot regarding how the drums work. The notes were completely different than anything I had seen on the original, even on songs that were supposed to be “warmup” or “easy”. Be interesting to get into it more and see if I could get the hang of it.

I do enjoy quite a few songs that were picked for Rock Band 2. I mean, there are always going to be some ridiculously hard songs in these kinds of games, but there is a very large selection of songs to choose from now. That is when you consider that you can transfer all the songs (I know except for 3) from the original Rock Band on to the hard drive and play those while you are playing Rock Band 2.

I took some pictures of them with the camera on my phone. I’m not sure I like how they came out, and I think I’m going to have to play with the phone a bit to get the pictures to look better.

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Learning About Phones

I believe the correct terminology for what I have now is a Pocket PC. I know that this isn’t entirely accurate, but the difference I see from a Smartphone to a Pocket PC is that the Pocket PC has a touch screen, but there are apparently Smartphones that have touch screens as well, so I’m not very clear on the distinction. What ever you want to call it I am still delving into all I can do with it.

I’ve already installed two software packages that will utilize the GPS. One is more suited for turn by turn directions. I will start using that immediately and some day I might never have to worry about getting lost. The other one is for the track log I want to make when I take the bike rides.

Then Jo got involved and now I have about a dozen more programs. I have tinytwitter, so that I can twitter from my phone more easily. If you aren’t already you should really check it out, it’s kind of a micro blog and IM rolled into one.

I have the Mundu messenger, and if I opt to pay the $11 I can have that for longer than five days. It works on both data and SMS, so if I ever decide that I don’t want to carry the data plan any longer I can switch to the unlimited SMS and still use this program.

I have a program that located where I am using the GPS and then shows the constellations I should be able to see from where I am.

I installed Opera and the flash plugin for that, because apparently it makes browsing a lot easier than using mobile IE.

There is so much to play with and I haven’t even had a chance to really delve into it all and play with it yet.