More blurry bacteria.

Little blurry , but its the only good shot of the other bacteria

Just for the uninformed, this pumpkin was labelled. It stopped about 50% of the questions about these pumpkins. That being the question of "What are those?" It didn't prevent the other 50% of questions which were "I don't get it?"

Looks like someone is here to drop off its viral rna payload!

No, no say it ain't so, are those flagela????? Now now, don't be cilia.

Here is bacteria, and viruses the lesser known ghouls of All Hallows Eve. Such monsters like bacillus subtilis, and cockeye. Lest we not forget Influenza the burninator.

TROGDOOOOOOOR!!!!!!! BURNINATION!!!!!!
TROGDOR the Burninator!

This was my pumpkin, I only had time to do about 50% before I had to run, so Eri fixed it up right for me, and she added the flames which were not in the original. You can get the pattern at www.homestarrunner.com.

Gargoyle in the light of day, lot less haunting. You can see how Erin peeled the skin back to create the glowing muscles

More Pumpkins, this one was wicked, Erin used her leet ninja carving skills to do this Gargoyle. The extra special technique was used to make the glowing musculerature was new this year, and promises many new pumpkin possibilities in the future.

The garage and pantry, oooooo. Well I think that pretty much wraps up the tour. I hope you all enjoyed it, I know I did. I'm just super excited for the house. Till later g.

One muddy, muddy car, for one muddy, muddy day. Lets just say that the inside and outside of the car need to be cleaned because of all the mud we tracked around.

Upstairs bathroom, and closet, all in one shot, I suspect this will be a less effective camera angle once I have dry wall.

Eri's office, she I suspect will get a lot more work done in her's, then I will.

My office

The master bed room ooooo aaaaah :) To get up here we had to be sneaky sneaky. Our construction stairs are not in place yet, so we had to climb up our neighbors construction stairs, and then walk across through the framing. Fortunetly, the framers have left temporary spaces for themselves to walk so it wasn't a squeeze.

Here is our backyard, the back wall of the house is the most finished, with all the insulation and all. it was very very muddy out back.

More basement, weeee. This one picked up the light a little different, so its all scary, and potentially monster filled. As all basements should be.

This one is our basement, I actually can't get down in there, but I was curious, so I hung the camera into the hole near the stairs and snapped. Walls are framed, but the floor isn't poured. I guess thats for drainage?

Here is our living room, as see from the front door. Checkout that awesome window out the back!

I started my photo tour of the house with something like this yesterday, except it didn't have the really cute girl in the picture, I hope she comes with the house :) I shall begin from here, and show you all the good pictures from the house trip yesterday.

Bitz's Pumpkin in the light, of the bathroom. I think I would be freaked out to be greated by that if I needed to pee. Actually I'm just joking around, we use the bathroom for photography because its the only place in the house you can get dark enough to get the pumpkin all by itself. As you can see by the other photos it works well.

Medium: Knife on Pumpkin
Artist: Elizabeth 'Bitz' Emigh
Title: Three Eyed Vampire

Blurry the pumpkin, he will be updated shortly, but in any case OoooOoooOooo

I have so many great photos to post today, and this is just the first. The rest will have to wait until I get home to my high speed connection. As you can see from the picture, our house is shooting up like a bean stalk to the clouds. In just two weeks we went from subfloor to second floor and roof truss. I am just so excited. More to follow, and pumpkins, including a co-carved pumpkin of the Burninator himself, and many highly more skilled additions from Erin and her family, with whom I pale in comparison. Until then enjoy this one.

Runner's Log, Wednesday October 27, 2004

580 Steps
0:15:00 (h:mm:ss)

This was just a short run, I played squash for 40 minutes first, but I wanted to just keep my heart rate up for a bit longer, so I jogged/speed walked most of the way home.

I also ran on monday, and played squash, but I'm debating logging things here any more when I got a new nifty program from Running Room.

But I haven't said anything in weeks, so I thought I would add my two cents to here.

A Suffusion of Yellow

A suffusion of yellow, boy I wish I had an e-ching calculator that would give me answers like that, instead I have this blasted headache still. You may note that I am still enamoured by Mr. Adams, and his detective stories, if you could call them that, I am still not sure a great deal of detecting is occurring, but they are pleasant none the less. The funny thing about e-ching, or however it is spelt, - well there are two funny things about it, the second is that it may be the first word (although not originally English) to be e'd. Before email, or eBusiness, or eToaster, or all the many things that did not need to be e'd, it, being centuries old, may have been the first. - is that e-ching has now appeared in two of the last three books I have read. Currently The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, and previously The Man in the High Castle. While it definitely featured more in the second then the first, I find it interesting that it should appear at all, as it is definitely something up until this point I had never heard about.

The fact is that none of what I just said really had any bearing on anything, and I suspect neither will this, only that this is a blog, so I feel inspired to discuss myself, and my general state of being. That state is particularly dreadful today, and much of yesterday. So dreadful in fact that it expressed itself in equally dreadful poetry, see that bit about the thumping. My cranium continues to ache with the ferocity of the big bang, and without using a large pile of 'explicative deleted' in my writing, I have come up with the following description. I imagine, that is to say I can't say for certain that the feeling would be similar, but I imagine none the less that this pain is comparable to that of say an African Safariest - That is a Brit on Safari with one of those ridiculous safari hats, an elephant gun, and a long thing, curly moustache with which he endlessly twists the ends together thinking reflectively. - hunting on the Serengeti suddenly finding himself being pithed. Now my stock answer on what is pithing, for those who do not know, is to take a metal or glass rod, insert it into the base of the skull of say, a frog, or our poor African Safariest, and twiddling it around all rowdily until you have left their brains a heaping pile of goo, imaginably painful, at least so long as you were alive. Now as our Safariest is in Africa you might imagine that neither a pithing implement, nor a particularly pith minded individual would be about, you mostly find those in science labs, so to complete the imagery with a rhinoceros. Yes the hunter becomes the hunted, divine retribution is served, and I have one HELL OF A HEAD ACHE, and, if I don't say so myself, a pretty good imagination. If my bizarre writings, or my writing of things bizarre, or the suffusion of commas has not yet turned you away I commend you.

I find myself, between head throbs, becoming quiet the admirer of audio books. In a certain respect they capture, nay demand your attention more so then the dead tree sort of book. This has the advantage of immersing you in the writing, but has the downside of restricting your ability to focus on other things. Interestingly it has not prevented the speedy writing of code, or the creation of an xml document, but if I should have need of a help document or an email, I must stop the book, or lose both the thread of the book, or the thread of the email. Another non-conflicting activity is spider solitaire, but in combination they exclude all else. All and all I highly recommend them for car trips, and periods of activity that can benefit by engaging an addle brain, but where a physical book is not convenient, like while exercising.

Well, my stop is up; hopefully this throbbing will stop soon.

Outrageously aggrieved (by the headache)

G

My feeling this morning, well I feel much like yesterday's poem, just at some metaphors for indigestion. Don't order Pizza Hut pizza, don't eat most of a large yourself, this is a bad thing, and only bad can come of it.

Well then, I think I have gone quiet mad. That's the second piece of non-sense and gibberish to come out of me today, and this one might be shaping up to be a third. I can hardly blame the old noggin; clearly something is up with all this thumping. It is just the damn weather, its changing, always changes in the fall, and spring, and with it the pressure. When the pressure changes, I get headaches, and they are not the kind that medication always helps. So I blather and try and ignore them. Also I can't take all the blame because odd poetry runs in the family, just ask my sister about the eyeballs hanging from the ceiling. I hope her new boyfriend isn't reading this by strange chance; I would so much like not to give the wrong impression. It's not that Jenn, my sister, is not weird, far from it - none of us lot are normal - but I don't need him knowing that, at least not right away. Perhaps I would feel better after a nice long nap, along the lines of those taken by Mr. Wodin; see The long dark tea time of the soul for an explanation. Hmmm a spot of tea might just be nice.

Any who, cheerio.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, thump went his head,
Death surly would come soon.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, thump went his head,
Or it best not be more then fashionably late.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, thump went his head,
Fast acing, extra strength, are they sure?

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, thump went his head,
Why do blood vessels have to be in my brain?

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, thump went his head,
Dammit, no reprieve in site.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, thump went his head,
Thump, Thump went his fists on the annoying ring tone source.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, went his head,
This Ibuprofen isn't half bad.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Thump, went his head,
Neither is it half good.

Thump, thump went his heart,
Went his head,
Aaaaa (that's the Aaaaa of a relaxed sigh, and not a scream of anguish) sighed his voice,
And that was all to be said.

I am afflicted with a perplexing melancholy this morning - and perhaps this week - maybe its winter fast approaching, maybe it's the day length shortening, I can't really say. Today should bring a final test of our system, and infrastructure before we go into pilot. I am of course referring to work, which I rarely do, but this is important. We have been working hard on this for a while, myself a year, and others two or more. So pilot is a significant milestone, but we are not there yet. Tonight I, if we get the go ahead, I will come back to work in the wee hours of the morning to run our final tests. Hopefully all will go smoothly, perhaps it is the milestone which drives me to distraction. Faltering on the last step of a marathon would be my comparison. My mental hope is that once we cross the line the new list of challenges will spur me on. So giddy up!

Random

I stopped my read this morning on the train,
My mind a wistful semblance of rational,
Through the glass I did stare,
To sky, a light, with fire,
The sun did burn the night away,
The clouds all pink and purple,
It is strange I thought to think and stare,
And beauty so natural and true,
If each morning we all did ponder,
Would each day we sunder the world in two?
I cannot stop this muse that has me,
Her heavenly beauty abounds,
Last lingers the night,
So still and cool,
While fire licks its breath away,
Such is how each morning starts,
And such is how it ends.

Our patio, and our neighbors subfloor beginning to be framed. We actually got to meet them at Mattamy University, which was this Thursday just past. Young couple like us, seemed nice. The Mattamy U thing was put on by the builder to explain there methodologies, and answer some questions. We found out the colour our exterior, but darned if I know what the colours are from their name's.
words mean.

• Brick: San Antonio


• Stone: Weathered Cotton


• Garage Door: Indian Maize


• Siding: Wicker


• Doors and Trim: Fort Vermilion Ironwood


• Soffits and Gutters: Royal Linen


• Shingles: Black

Front patio and living room, nice fall day in the garden back there.

Our house now has it's basement framed, and the first floor subfloor down, and the patio is poured. Its coming along quite fast.

OOooo scary, the basement stairs, well more like stair, as they are not in place yet, and that first step is a bit of a doozy.

The kitchen, and pantry

What type of extension are you?

This made me laugh, partially because the quiz was asinine, and partially because the description was correct, although, I resent being an html, but it's a little more pretentious then being a .htm file extension.

Runner's Log, October 13, 2004

4330 steps
0:35:35 h:mm:ss

Well it was a long brisk walk instead of a run, but exercise is better then none.

Cheers

Runner's Log, October 12, 2004

3440 steps
0:32:47 h:mm:ss

I have to go see the guy who made my shoe inserts, my legs are killing. Last week I chalked it up to time away from the old tarmac, but it has persisted. So I think what happened is that when he installed the neoprene top, it over emphasized the arch support causing my feet to roll even more. In effect he actually made things worse not better. Fortunately he stands behind his work, and they were fine before the neoprene pad, so I just need him to shave down the arch support a little. Hopefully no problem. Anyways my heart rate when I measured it was 130, which is right in my target heart rate for weight loss, and I took that measurement at the end of my cool down so that's good. The thing is, I want to be out there and hour and I can't break 40, with out breaking me. Well lets see how soon I can get my inserts fixed and then we will start discussing modifying something else, one variable at a time.

G out

Runner's Log, October 7, 2004

3370 Steps
0:32:05 h:mm:ss

Today was definitely not my best, I actually walked most of it, but I did force myself to extend the route to compensate, so it wasn't a super workout, but it wasn't a bust. I expect this weekend will actually follow the same format, long walks, instead of runs. That's ok, its still better then no exercise, and it lets my muscles heal, and get used to moving more then normal. Maybe Monday I will run, but I shall keep up the power walks till then.
They say, and they being the Running Room's magazine and something Erin read, that habits take 21 days to form, and after that you are set. So I intend to walk or run everyday in the evening or late afternoon for the next 21 days, until its habit!

Cheers

Runner's Log Tuesday, October 6, 2004

234 Steps
0:09:37 (h:mm:ss)

Ouch Ouch Ouch,
Apparently I still need a days rest between runs,
I made it down the street before my calves were on fire. Tomorrow should be better, I hope...

Mount St Helen's

As a dutiful blogger I have decided to comment on the news of the day, and one of the top stories of course is Mount St Helen's. As it seems eruption is once again imminent, and as I have no ready.gov symbol to represent volcanic danger (terrorist induced or not,) I am left with the responsibility of reminding you the public of the danger of volcano's with a photographic history of the 1980 eruption.

Pre Eruption:



during Eruption: (Ahhh run away)



Post Eruption:



So remember, don't be afraid, be ready, and get the hell of the mountain!

These photo's were brought to you from my mother's Mount St Helen's Salt and Pepper shakers, purchased by 80% of all visitors (okay 80% is a guess, but its probably not far off.)

Oh yeah, late update, the link on the title takes you off to the volcanocam pointing at Helen, you will note that the Casecade mountain range looks more believable then my own version.

Runner's Log Tuesday, October 5, 2004

2369 steps
0:19:22 (h:mm:ss)

Today I am going to start recording my running, mostly for my own edification. Since I have a pedometer I got for free in Texas (see back in July archive) I figured I might as well use it. The thing also does kcal and miles, but that depends on your stride. I don't know exactly how to calibrate my stride, or how long it is. So I figure as long as I take steps and time, and at some point figure out my stride, I can work it all backwards, assuming my stride doesn't change.

So if you see posts of this nature, they are mostly for me, and not for you, but you are all welcome to cheer along!

now I'm going to go have an asthma attack.

Jabberwocky

Preamble
Well I have been pretty bad about posting these days of late, so I figured I would get some old dead authors to post for me.... So here is the first one:


'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal blade in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought-
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh, Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

-- Lewis Caroll

Don't be afraid... Be Ready!

Apparently the Department of Homeland Security made a set of images to be used on their ready.gov site to help prepare people for terrorist attacks. These images have become the subject of many a spoof including on the site linked to from the title. I have take from that site some of my favorites and reproduced them for you below. Enjoy!



Know the terrorist by his bloodshot eyes and leprous hands. Many terrorists are also amateur comedians--Don't be thrown off guard by their feeble attempts at shadow puppets.






Time travel is an excellent option after a terrorist attack. Remember, you must reach exactly 88 mph and hit the dangling power line in order for the flux capacitor to operate properly.






If you see a terrorist arrow, pin it against a wall with your shoulder.








You can't help this poor arrow. Move along, there's nothing to see here.








Beware--some terrorists look like Michael Jackson and have an arsenal of clean white shirts.







Do not offer anal sex to terrorists. You will regret it afterwards.