Monthly Archives: October 2007

Vote for Me!!!

Hey if you get a chance vote for me at The Modshop!

I put my Mystery Machine case mod up there just for the fun of it and it got nominated to battle another case mod.

The ModShop showcases case mods and put them against each other in elimination type contests where users vote for them to win prizes! They’ve got a lot of great prizes as well, even the lowest prize is a copy of Vista Ultimate so that’s not to shabby..

The prize list is as follows:

  • Winner – $1200 + a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate
  • Second Place – $400 + a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate
  • Runners-Up (3rd and 4th place) – $200 + a copy of Windows Vista
  • Honorable Mention (5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th place) – a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate

Anyway click HERE to vote for The Mystery Machine to win it’s battle and then move on to the next round… Yes you’ll have to register, but it’s though Maximum PC magazine so I would think they won’t be spamming anyone.. and thanks to anyone who does vote for me!

CraigsList

Y’know I’ve never used CraigsList before, I know a lot of people that do use it and do very well with it renting apartments and selling things they no longer need.

A friend of mine recently asked me to list a few of his things on there for him as he just didn’t have time to clean it up, take pictures and post the listings….

So I went and did this, and I also posted a message as well under their gigs section looking for a blogger to help with another project, now mind you CraigsList is essentially anonymous unless you put contact info directly into your post, any replies are relayed through them to your specified email account.

So for my first adventure with CraigsList I got replies, one of them was critiquing my ads.. yeah whatever, if I wanted to know what they thought… but anyway, the best is the death threats I received.  Why would someone who has no clue who you are send threatening emails to someone? I don’t understand it at all….

Now I’ve never been on CraigsList, as I said this was my first  experience and well, it’s not a good one so far…

Of course since I was new I had to explore a bit… what’s up with the ‘legal’ prostitution on there? They offer services for 100 roses for an hour or 100 handshakes for an hour… umm, yeah ok….

and I’ve found that people are extremely rude and ignorant to other people on there…

Oh well….

What’s for dinner?

So Sundays are rather lazy days, my two oldest boys get to go to Grandmas, but my 2yr old gets to stay home and hang out with me. My Mom is sick and she can’t really handle a 2yr old running around, and her house isn’t quite child proof…

but anyway, on Sundays I never expect to get much real work done, so I usually try and make something good for dinner.

So I decided to make some rigatoni and meatballs.. I had a pound of bacon as well so I threw that in there too.

I had two pounds of ground beef, to which I added about 3/4 of the pound of bacon, (raw-uncooked), to that I added the usual suspects, basil, oregano, salt,pepper, eggs, breadcrumbs, garlic and some Parmesan cheese. Let them cook till done, ended up with about 30 nice sized meatballs. When finished I like to throw them in a bowl and coat them lightly with sauce as well… Nicely browned meatballs are nice, but I like a hint of red coloring on them, and it does add a bit of flavoring as well.

For the Rigatoni, just boiled as usual with a little salt and olive oil in the water. I really didn’t have time to make homemade sauce, but the stuff in jars isn’t too bad with some help. So I got two jars of Del Grosso pasta sauce, 1 was Tomato-Basil and the other was Three Cheese (Parm,Romano and Asiago). I cooked the remaining bacon and diced it up added that to the two jars of sauce along with basil, oregano, salt, fresh pepper, garlic (a lot) and half of a stick of butter, tossed the hot rigatoni in and it was pretty much ready. I like to coat my pasta with about 3/4 of the sauce and reserve the rest for serving.

Pasta should always be served in a bowl, preferably a shallow type bowl, I like to put a bit of sauce in the bottom of the bowl, then the sauce coated pasta, a few meatballs and a bit more sauce. Of course we’ll need a bit of grated parm and romano cheeses and a bit of parsley for color…

It came out very good, you might think a pound of bacon might be a bit overwhelming, but it’s not really, it just adds a nice hint of the smoky flavoring to it all.

Now tomorrow, once everything has sat and all the flavors have had a chance to really meld together it will be extra delicious, I can’t wait… Yum-Yum

The Mystery Machine Case Mod -Now What?!

Well about two years ago now I created a case mod for my kids, I made The Mystery machine from Scooby Doo for them out of a computer case… As they’ve gotten older I’ve found that the computer inside was just a bit lacking and Windows 98 wasn’t what they were using in school and such and what they sort of know how to use, or at least is familiar to them. They’re 5 and 6 so they don’t know that much but they do know it’s different than what they have in school and they know about the internet and sites like Nickeldeon and others like it, and of course they want to get on there and play those games… The system that is in there doesn’t have ethernet and it’s not really capable of running Windows XP, so I had to upgrade, which meant everything got upgraded, CPU, mobo etc.

So now I’m wondering what am I supposed to do with their old computer/case mod … I was thinking to donate it to my youngest sons daycare for them to let the smaller children use, or I could possibly sell it (but is it even worth anything? other than maybe a pop art type collectible?!?!) or maybe just give it away to someone who might need it for their children…

Dunno… any advice for me?!

Click HERE to read the full worklog and details of the mod, and here’s a few pictures as well:

(Thumbs open in new window to 1024×786 size approximately)

 

  

  

  

  

Postcards from WWII – part 2

I’ve got 19 more scanned in, these are the only real ‘War’ related postcards that he had.

Clicking the thumbnails will open them in a new window, sized 1024×768 approx

I like this one quite a bit, if you look closely at the blonde girl on the right side of the picture she just looks so pissed off.. Like ‘why are they taking my picture?’

The next eight postcards are self-explanatory… They are marked on the back with the Grogan Photo Company, Danville, ILL. I like these a lot as well, it’s amazing to see the ‘technology’ they had back then to fight wars with.

These are all scenes from the war, photographed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps:

These last ten depict the Liberation of Paris (Liberation de Paris), as for any identifying marks, they say ‘real-photo’ C.A.P.-Paris and each has a description of the scene which I have under each one for you.

Taking of Military School American Flags at Military Parade

The F.F.I. parade Place de la Concorde (left)

The Official Procession Rue de Rivoli (right picture)

General Eisenhower at the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb (left picture)

Official Platform Place de le Concorde (right picture)

left to right in photo:

General Koenig

General de Gaulle

General Bradley

Welcome to the ‘Jeeps’ General de Gaulle with the tanks.

The tanks pass in the Champs-Elysses (left picture)

General de Gaulle (right picture)

Well that’s it till I scan more in…. Enjoy!

TechBurgh and Tubu Internet Solutions bring you $10/year Hosted blogs

I just got an email from the folks at Techburgh and they’ve worked out a deal for some very affordable hosting, it’s less than $1 per month to have you blog hosted on their servers… very nice deal actually, and you’ll become part of the TechBurgh blog network so it basically includes some basic promotion for your new blog as well… now a bad deal, too bad I already have hosting…

But here’s the email with the info:

TechBurgh and Tubu Internet Solutions bring you $10/year Hosted blogs

Are you blogging? if you are, wanna make it better? if not, why not?!

Let me define ‘blog’ for you.
Short for “Web log,” a specialized site that allows an individual or group of individuals to share a running log of events and personal insights with online audiences. Blogs with political or current-events themes have grown in popularity and become “soap boxes” for instant mass-audience commentary.
www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm

We at the TechBurgh blog (and podcast) seem to be pretty good at making deals. We pleaded and wheeled and dealed (and at one point threw a tantrum) with the fine partners at Tubu Internet Solutions to arrange something really special to grow the ‘blogosphere’.

You can now get a hosted WordPress blog for just $10 per year!

We’re aiming to sign up 250 blogs. It seems like a lot but I think it’s doable.

Why?
We’re trying to promote blogging. Not just “I had a good cup of coffee this morning” blogging but interesting, organization, fundraising, meaningful blogging too. Especially in the Pittsburgh region – cos we love Western Pa!

What is a hosted blog?
Well, it is a professionally hosted (Tubu is great!). A hosted site gives you functionality, flexibility and customization that anyone needs to start their own blog. Use templates, addons and all kinds of fun stuff.

Wait, isn’t there free services out there?
Yes, yes there are services like blogger and typepad etc. etc but they’re full of ads and not nearly as customizable as a hosted blog is. Also withh a hosted blog you can use your own web address (instead of whatever.blogger.com)

But I don’t know how to blog!
You’re reading this aren’t you? well, in that case you know how to blog. It’s that easy. If you need help both TechBurgh and Tubu can help.

How can I help?
I know a lot of you might have blogs already but spread the word, post an article on your blog/site and let people know they can get blogging for less than $1 a month.

How do I get started?
Just reply to this message and we’ll get you going. http://techburgh.com/blog/2007/10/20/get-blogging-were-starting-a-network/

What else?
Well, every blog that signs up will be listed on the TechBurgh blog (instant promotion) and will be part of a TechBurgh blog network.

and more info about this offer can be found here:  http://techburgh.com/blog/get-blogging/

A little piece of History- Postcards from WWII

Well I decided to do a bit of cleaning up in my attic and came across quite a few things I had long forgotten about, namely my grandfathers postcard collection… It’s not really a collection, but it’s from his time in the Army during World War II, he collected quite a few postcards from the states and in Europe. So I figured I’d scan then in and share them with people…

The first set is sort of not postcards, I think they were used to put into a letter as a funny type thing, not sure exactly what they might be called.. anyone know? but there are 18 total of them here for you to check out. According to the Copyright they were made by Curt Teich and Co. I did a bit of research and found they are very popular for making postcards…

Anyway, here they are… The thumbnails open to a new window which the picture will be 1024×768 resolution.. I scanned these in high resolution and brought them down to size to be a bit more internet bandwidth friendly. Oh, they were scanned in with a Planon Docupen RC800 portable color scanner if you’re curious…

I think my favorite one is number six actually.. the one about the nice ass…

Click HERE to Digg it to share

-On a side note… I was just checking my stats and on Google I’m ranked #5 for searching for my first name… interesting, and a bit odd