Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

"... I can stop watching TV..."

In the words of 'Pigman' from PCU, I say that I have finished my quest to watch seasons 3 - 7 of DS9.

I finished up the last 5 episodes Thursday night. I have to say that watching a series that you love on DVD is addictive. Particularly when you are renting them via Netflix. Watching each disc as quickly as possible to allow for the return it to the mailbox as soon as possible. It makes for small marathons when you are lucky enough to have several discs at the same time.

Gina & I worked from the Dallas office this week. I had to drop her off @ DFW for her flight home. She has been making it a bit of a tradition to travel to Michigan for Halloween. This leaves me home along with the dogs. No big worries, I have started to get the hang of feeding all of them raw food. It is only slightly harder than kibble yet easier than canned food.

I say easier only from the stand point that canned food tends to be a hassle to scoop out. Because one can of food isn't enough to feed the four of them. However, two cans is too much. Which means I have to find the plastic topper, that (for me) never seems to fit right. Then there is the fact that the canned food on occasion upsets the bud or Emma's stomach, meaning there can be even messier cleanup that has to be done later.

I have been pestering Gina to post in her blog more and more. One of Gina's latest posts talks about raw feeding, she has been helping her friend Kelly with feeding her dogs.

I am a bachelor for the next few days. I hope to finish this last round of cleaning up of my home office. I have been purging some stuff. I tend to pack rat. You never know when your going to need an IDE ribbon cable, or C programming book.

Given that my quest to re-watch DS9 is now over. I hope to spend time working on some side projects with Jeremy. Plus his weight loss goals will soon hit my own weight. In the spirit of competition I told him that when he hits my weight, that I will throw my hat into the ring. And see if I can't match his weight loss. I am going to need try to setup some tracking logic on the blog here.

I really need to take some time and work on customizing the blog. I am still just using one of the stock templates. Seeing as I am going to have to play around more with RSS feeds for a project for work I have already had a plan for a new technosnobs home page that reads the blog here and posts the latest entry on the main page. The www.jaduka.com home page does this same thing. I had the pleasure of writing up a quick prototype for Devegoodwin to model.

Back on the bachelor subject. I am at the moment torn on what to do for lunch. I am thinking about making chili. However, since I don't have any of the needed stuff to make chili, I think I am going to have to wait until tomorrow. I will try to measure the ingredients so that I can post the recipe up here on the blog. It has turned out really good the last few times I made it. Most likely because of the fact that I make the base of the chili this time the same way Gina makes her spaghetti sauce.

It has been a long month so far. Lots of late nights, some of them working, others watching DS9. So I think I am going to sneak in a nap.

The Alamo Drafthouse is showing 'Man Of The Year' at 3:25. It is a movie I wanted to see and it would mean that I can eat a late lunch. Then I can grab stuff to make chili for tomorrow.

Basic Chili Ingredients:
ground meat (turkey or beef)
stewed tomatoes
onions
garlic
green peppers
1 can of corn
2 jalapeños
chili powder
ground black pepper
cumin
cayenne pepper
Beans (Kidney, Pinto, Black)

well nap time.

laterz

For those of you that have been keeping up with the old blog here. I have been watching the Deep Space Nine, renting from Netflix. I started with season 3, far enough into the series for it to be interesting and at basically the very start of the Dominion conflict.

Now, what does this have to do with Art imitating life?

Not a ton I guess, I mean it is not like we have Klingons roaming around or anything. However, there have been a couple of episodes here and there that were similar to events here in the real world. Which, is funny, because of the fact that the show was made in the past. However, I guess human nature prevails, creature of comfort.

But last night the disc I popped in had an episode on it called, "Once More into the breach". Which reminded me of the entry I did several weeks ago.

I have to admit that I picked the title based upon an episode that I watched for an entry I did a last week, Fortune Favors The Bold.

About six months ago I was talking with a mentor of sorts, about career advancement and what not. I might have mentioned this already, but my mind is a jumble, so I will finish the story. He told me to watch movies and look for leadership characteristics that I felt were good.

As silly as it seems, I have to say that the writers for Deep Space Nine did a good job of making the character Benjamin Sisko into a good role model for leadership.

Watching the series again has been very fun. I have to say that I like the Quark character even more than I did before. I guess he appeals to that inner businessman I have in me.

Oh yeah, I guess before I finish. The new flapperless toilet has been working out well. Doing what it should. Gina asked John to watch the house when we were in Dallas this past weekend. He was intrigued by the toilet. He had to take the tank top off and get a look at how it works.

All for now.

Laterz

Or so I am told. I don't consider myself too bold. However, fortune has favored me more often than not.

A couple of updates.

1. I managed to get the faucet handle fixed. I bought a set of Allen wrenches for about $4. Worked like a charm. Go figure. Hopefully, the handle that is coming is the right part. As I did scratch up the one that is there now. The repair kit should be coming soon from Delta as well.

2. The flapperless tank is not compatible with the old toilet bowl. I ran out to Home Depot at the last minute to pick up the matching bowl. I got there with about 10 minutes to spare before closing.

3. The guest bathroom has a new toilet. It was an interesting experience removing the old toilet. And as I have described recently, removing that old wax is disgusting. Also, the flapperless tank's gasket is quite different than a regular toilet tank gasket. It is flat, it doesn't actually fit into the hole in the bowl. The flapperless tank gasket is supposed to just line up over the hole.

If you aren't careful about this, water will spill out the back. As I found out. Part of the reason for this is that the flapperless bowl has slots vs holes for the bolts. The slots are intended to allow the tank to be positioned at different levels away from the wall, to ensure that the installation of a the whole toilet will fit well with the positioning of the hole for the old toilet.

If it is back too far, then water comes out. If you position it all the way to the front, no problems. It would have been helpful the instructions were more explicit about this. "The gap is normally 1/2" to 1" ..." doesn't really help me. Seeing as I can't see the gap once I put the tank on the bowl, the tank covers everything.

4. Deep Space 9 Season 7 will be waiting for me when I get back from Dallas this week. I have managed to watch seasons 3 - 6 in just about a month using Netflix. I honestly cannot believe that I didn't use Netflix before now. It is an awesome service.

5. I am in Dallas. I have came to Dallas to meet with Bobby Goodwin, about the next phase of developement. I also spent some time with Brent working on the next generation of our billing system. Good stuff, it has been a while since I have had the opportunity to really design something as simple, yet complex as a billing system.

I was going to do some work on our corporate site. But I can't get into the gateway from the hotel. So it will have to wait until morning.

Speaking of which, it is late and I feel the need to sleep the good sleep now.

laterz

ps, yeah another Friday in Dallas.

So the wife has turned me into a reading fanatic. Well a fanatic in comparison to how much I used to read.

We hit up Half-Price Books a few weeks ago for well books. I browsed their sci-fi selection for World-of-Warcraft books. Oddly enough, no WoW books. However, they had a fine selection of Star Trek books. I am a closet Trekie.

I enjoy watching the original kirk and spock, (aka The Original Series, TOS). Picard and Data in The Next Generation (TNG) are good as well, of course the first season or two are extremely laughable when compared with any of the later seasons and series that followed.

Then came Sisko, Quark, Odo and the rest of the crew on Deep Space Nine (DS9). Janeway and Seven of 9 had a couple of good seasons on Voyager (VGR or VOY), the wife loves Voyager. Then came the ill-fated Enterprise, with Captain Archer and T'Pol, I enjoyed the last two seasons of that show.

But the one that really caught my interest was DS9. Maybe it was the fact the hero and I share first names, Benjamin Sisko. Or it could be the fact that it sported some of the best action (space battle) scenes that I remember not being on the silver screen.

So the Star Trek books that caught my eye @ Half-Price Books were that of The Dominion War. Which happens to be the episodes that had the best action scenes. However, the books crossed over between the TNG and DS9 shows, so I had to pick them up. They had books 1 & 2. The following week we went to a bigger Half-Price Books and I lucked out as they had books 3 & 4.

So I finally finished up the 4th book the other day. Books 1 & 3 were TNG based, they were quite good. At the end of book 3 I actually felt a little bit of remorse that they had killed of Professor Grof, he had been a prick most of book 1 and 3, but proved himself in the end when it counted. I'm sure if it had been in a movie or TV show it would have been in the last 15 minutes of the show.

Books 2 & 4 were also good. However, they were adaptations of the show. This renewed my love of DS9, so much that I looked at how much the series costs on DVD. Answer to that, way too much for me to spend on some DVDs.

So I turned to Netflix. Jeremy has been using them for a while, with little complaints (if any at all). So in standard fashion I follow his lead. He used them to rent and watch the first season of Lost. Something I too may have to do. But not until I finish watching Seasons 3 - 7 of DS9, with a few of the wife's picks thrown in here and there.

So I signed up on Tuesday night. They got my first three DVDs in the mail on Weds and tonight I have been watching them while finishing up some stuff for work. Speaking of, I need to wrap this up and get back to finishing that stuff up.

I think I will be able to return two of the discs tomorrow. Meaning that I should receive some more DVDs on Monday. (Discs should hit their center on Saturday, hopefully my next two go out that afternoon, and arrive Monday).


I felt the need to also mention the CD that has been in high rotation for the last couple of weeks.

"Meds" by Placebo.



The first like 4 tracks are great, the middle ones tend to be a little too slow, and the last half pick back up the pace. I will say that when the disc is on shuffle in the car the slower tracks don't bug me.

Ending this post, all I will say is.

Someone call an ambulance, there is gonna be an accident.

Laterz