build your vocab, feed a child

I meant to post this site up awhile ago but never got around to it so I forgot all about it until today when I heard a report about it on npr.

the site is www.freerice.com

basically, you go to the site and and they give you a word and a list of options for definitions for the word. as you answer more questions correctly, the difficulty level of the word goes up. nothing new, right? well, here's where the revolutionary part comes in. for every word you get right, the site donates 10 grains of rice to help end world hunger. as the word difficulty goes up, the more grains of rice they donate per correct word. how can they afford to do this? they have sponsors that pay for ads on their site which they in turn use to pay for the rice. just yesterday alone they donated 167,077,300 grains of rice. so, if you have time, stop by their site, build your vocab, feed a hungry kid.

I give it two phones up

as some of you may know my phones been gone for about two months now. in any case, as of today, I have a new phone with a new phone company (same phone number) so you can start reaching me at my area code 785 phone number again if you need to.

866-411-SONG

ever had a song come on the radio and not know what the song is? well now you can. just punch in the above number and hold the receiver up to the radio and the phone'll tell you what the name of the song is.

alvin, simon, theodore...

yes my friends. it's true. alvin and the chipmunks are coming back from the '80s. not only them but if my sources are correct some little blue men (and maybe a blue chick or two) may be coming back with them... you can read about it here

undead ninja giant

I finally dug out my giant model a couple of days ago and this is as far as I've gotten so far. I've made a couple of conversions to the model. if you have any ideas to make it more undead-y or ninja-y, let me know.

you don't see that every day

I took the day off from work because my brother's getting married tomorrow and I have family coming in from out of town. This being the situation, I spent most of the morning cleaning up. As I was cleaning the fridge out (something I suggest doing more often than bi-annually), I heard the roar of something that sounded like cannons coming from the distance. Much to my dismay, no cannons, no pirate ships, not even an anchor anywhere in sight. Where could that sound be coming from? I thought to myself. And then the answer came marching from below the horizon (or around the corner if you prefer). The cannon roar was coming from the drum line of the marching band. Apparently, today is their homecoming parade or something. It's not every day that a marching band marches down your street and past your house.

radiohead gives away free music

yes you read it right. the band radiohead is giving away free music. I first heard the news on npr on my way home from work and decided to give it a try. apparently, the band recently broke away from its record label and as a way of protesting against big record labels and their fixed pricing, the band is "giving away" their music. well, there's a catch... they aren't really "giving" it away. when you enter their website at www.radiohead.com you'll be asked to click enter to enter their site. then you'll need to click continue. you'll then be given the option of either pre-ordering the discbox or the digital download. the discbox comes with the usual CD, an ehance CD, a vinyl, some cool artwork, and a hardback copy of the lyrics. the downside? it costs about 40 GBP or approximately $80. if, however, you click on the download option, when you check out where the price should be you'll see a question mark. you can put ANY amount you want in there...even free! I wound up putting 5 GBP in there (the equivalent of $10). as I see it it's a win-win situation for all. Radiohead gets higher profits (they get all of the profits as opposed to having to pay a percentage to the record labels) and the fans get what they want - great music at a great price. now a couple of caveats: 1)the currency is in GBP so if you have any hesitancies about ordering stuff online internationally, this deal is probably not for you. 2)the download isn't officially released until Oct 10, 2007 so you can't download the songs until then. 3)there is a 0.45 GBP (approximately $1) processing charge so the CD download officially cost me $11.14 (5 GBP donation + 0.45 GBP processing fee). so if you like good music and sticking it to big record labels give radiohead a try. if you do wind up doing this, drop me a comment about your experience on the radiohead website. peace.

Heroes season 2 (september 24)

I am soooo looking forward to this...

from the market

guess what this is...

here's a hint...

yeah...I dance like this in real life...

yup. that's my sim shakin' his groove thang

it's like seeing the future

sometimes I like commuting. like today. my wife called me and wanted me to grill something for dinner and have it ready for her when she came home. I told her that it was probably not such a good idea because it was raining so hard in lawrence. sure enough about ten minutes after I reached olathe the monsoon hit. I am a genius!

happy halloween

in honor of halloween next month I thought I'd start working on some grave guards. here's one of them.

giving 1200%

what has 1200% of your daily recommended Vitamin C you ask?

Across The Universe - Trailer

when I first saw the trailer for the movie I thought to myself that there was no way I was going to go see this movie. but then again, I thought the same thing about moulin rouge. since then, they've released trailers that are a whole lot better than the first one I saw and now I can't imagine not seeing this movie. it looks like moulin rouge meets the part in forrest gump about the war demonstrations and instead of using random songs to tell the story, they use beatles songs. you can see other clips of songs at their website: http://acrosstheuniverse.com

we're expecting...

Andrea went to the farmer's market today and bought a couple of bunches of basil and mint. we found a caterpiller on one of them and figured it'd be fun to watch it grow so we're gonna keep him. we haven't given it a name yet. any ideas?

it's still so cuuuuutttteeee!

the game comes out sept 18. until then, you can do what I do. look at this picture and giggle a little.

monkey bread

yes my friend. such a thing does exist. it, unfortunately, is more bread than monkey. in fact, it has absolutely no monkey in it at all. it, according to my wife, is some sort of cinnamon roll-y thingy which actually looked pretty good.

felicitas felix?

to start off, today's pay day. then when I went in to work, one of the managers came and got me and handed me a visa gift card for $100. apparently, our company did pretty well last fiscal year so they were rewarding all of their employees. we also got a tote bag of some sort (I forgot to pick mine up). then when I got home, both of the packages that andrea and I had ordered off of ebay came today even though we ordered them on different days. isn't that strange? maybe I quaffed some of that felicitas felix.

tea'd out

Andrea and I went to a tea ceremony yesterday night at her mom's boss's house. as part of the ceremony, the lady that was doing it brought over some kimonos from japan. here's two of them. the one Andrea has on cost about $100,000 US dollars according to the lady.

guess what someone forgot...?

update

two weeks ago, I applied for a new position at my job. well, I got it and have been training for it since then. today, I found out that I was also given the second position I applied for so I actually have two positions now. so I have lots of training to do in the next couple of weeks. what am I gonna do tonight? probably just sit back, watch tv, and maybe paint.

a storm's a-coming

a storm's a-coming. you can smell it in the eastern wind. you can see it in the flashes of the cannon. you can hear it in the din of war. we, the people of the ninja isles will be ready for it when it comes.

well deserved

I just had the best sandwich I'd ever made. it had sliced beef, salami, honey ham, two slices of cheese, mustard and mayonaise on honey white bread. I'm not sure if it tasted so good because it actually was good or if I was hungry or if it felt like I earned it cause I had just gotten done mowing the lawn in 80+ degree weather. in fact, I think that's why pickle moved to minnesota. he claims it's for his job but he just didn't want to have to mow his lawn as much. lazy pickle.

friggin' awesome!

is it mr. potato head? is it optimus prime? it's both! it's optimash prime!

zombies are people too

I was at work today and the company released a revision to one of their operating procedures. apparently, as of now, donors who are deceased are to be permanently deferred from donating. apparently, we've been having problems with donors who have passed away trying to come back in to donate. do you hear that zombie donors. no more donating for you. I think it has something to do with the smell... take a shower then come back and try again.

what the futures holds for me

andrea, her mom, her sister, and I went out to dinner tonight after church. we went to a local chinese buffet. they got fortunes like "you will soon be singled out for a promotion". I kid you not. this is the fortune I got:

pics

here are a couple of pics from our honeymoon. I would've had more but my batteries ran out so I only got about fifty or so pics in total. andrea has a lot more. if you want to see more pics, you can check out my facebook page.


I just had to put this picture up. in case you're wondering, yes, that is a goat crossing the street and yes we are passing a car in the right hand lane (they drive on the left hand side because they're technically british)

just a fun scene from one of the restaurants we ate at

andrea and I at the italian restaraunt. it was one of the nicer restaraunts so we had to dress up. dress up meant long pants and a shirt with a collar for guys.

andrea and I on our tour of the island. the peak in the background is one of the pitons. there are two of them. that's what the island is best known for (the twin pitons). that and the saying "no pressure no problem". there's a volcano on the island so there's constantly steam coming up. as long as you see the steam, you know that pressure isn't building up and you need pressure for an eruption so "no pressure, no problem".

we're back!

as most of you that read this blog with any regularity already know, Andrea and I are now back in the states. we had a lot of fun in St. Lucia. I got sun-burnt and stung by what I can only assume are micro-jellyfish. but all i all it was a blast. we went scuba diving, hobie catting (sailing on a catamaran), and beach bumming. scuba was lots of fun. it'd been about two years since we'd been certified and we hadn't gone since then so we had to take a refresher course. as for hobie catting, they give you a five minute speech and give you a boat. that's the gist of it. your job is then to not crash into any boats larger than you (the smaller ones are ok to crash into though) and, here's the tough part, maneuvering your way back into the port from whence you came. it's a lot like kiteflying in that you spend a lot of time trying to catch the wind. I think we spent about thirty minutes actually sailing and the other hour and a half figuring out how to get back into port (there was almost no wind that day). the rest of the time there was spent going on tours of the island, eating, and just playing on the beach. we'll post pics later.

Dillons

I made my first foray into the dillons in olathe today. Yes, my new place is close to a dillons too. Even closer than the other place actually. I've gotta admit it feels kinda strange walking into another dillons. I don't know exactly what the feeling is but it's a feeling of knowing that it isn't your dillons. nothing's where it's supposed to be and they don't have all the produce they're supposed to have. I suppose I'll just have to get used to it. well, I'm off to cook my very first meal at the new place (rigatoni with sausage and a salad..mmmmm...food...)

thar be pirates!

one of my friends works at the movie theatre in lawrence and last night, they had an advanced screening of the new pirates of the caribbean movie and I was lucky enough to go. in short, I think that overall the movie is better than the other two. there is quite a bit more humor with several plot twists involved. that is not to say, however, that action is lacking. there are several fight sequences and explosions. there are also several cameos scattered throughout the movie. my only semi-complaint about the movie is about the soundtrack. true, it is better than the second movie but nowhere near as good as the first one. unfortunately, they brought Hans Zimmerman back for the third installment of the pirates trilogy instead of Klaus Baudelt. although Zimmerman's music is usually great, it felt like for the pirate trilogy he just did variations on Baudelt's previous score. overall, I'd give the movie a 9 1/2 stars out of ten. see it for yourself and be your own judge.

7.50

what can you get for $7.50? the answer is Mirrormask. if you don't own a copy of it yet, you can get one at Best Buy. you can also get a little over two gallons of gas at the local gas-o-mart. so how much did it cost me to fill my tank? a little over five mirrormasks worth. yup. $39.50 for a full tank of gas. that's ridiculous! well, enough of my gas rant. off to relax.

beds are soooo much softer than floors

I've been sleeping in the new house for the past couple of nights and we hadn't gotten our new bed in yet so the obvious alternative is the floor which would be fine if, like most newer homes, the living room was carpeted. our house, was built in the 1920s. everything is hardwood. well in any case, we finally got the bed in and I finally purchased the frame tonight and put everything together. it is soooo much nicer than hardwood floor. it's probably even nicer than my full-sized bed. well, off I go to enjoy the bed.

hooked up

it's official! I now have cable and cable internet in the new house. yea!

update

what've I been up to? well, we closed on the house on thursday and we finally got access to our house on saturday so basically I've been busy cleaning. we haven't gotten very far in the process yet. as of saturday and sunday we've only been able to clean about three of the fifteen or so storm windows, changed one set of locks on the door, painted one door, and puttied all the holes in the wall. we're gonna try to paint the living room sometime later this week.

yea! I'm back!

well, for the past two weeks, I've been trying to get back onto blogger. as many of you bloggerites know, they recently merged with google which means that you now must bow down to the google gods to use your blogger accounts. well, I being the weak and lowly mortal that I am, did such bowing and in said process was required to enter a new user name and password. well, long story short, I was cleaning out the computer registry and cleaned out the cookies that had the password and user id stored in it and couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were. well, just today (not two minutes ago), after much trial and tribulation, I was finally able to deduce my user id (go me). and much like a lowly mortal begging at his god's feet for a boon, I had to send a request to have my password reset. all this to say I'm back! and, like Kratos, google gods I say to you, beware! for your reign of tyranny is over!

clearance granted

great news! you have been granted security clearance to get a rare glimpse of the war room. you may notice holes in the ceiling but don't mistake this as a weakness in the impenetrable fortress that is my war room. it is simply a defensive tactic used to lure enemy nations into thinking that we have a weakness.

the creative process

sometimes I'm just in awe of the creative process. I was bored this evening and thought I'd try a little doodling (which I hadn't done in a while). this mishapened mutant is what I came up with:

after much more doodling and many revisions, I came up with this semi-decent drawing:

cowabunga dude!

for those of you not in the know, nintendo releases new virutal console games for the wii on mondays. I just checked today's list of games and on it was TMNT the original game! I so totally downloaded it and will be spending the next couple of hours blissfully reliving my childhood. totally gnarly!

we have a house!

well, after countering the seller's offer, we have a house! we just got the news tonight that they accepted it so that's good. we're paying full asking price but they'r paying $2500 in closing cost. I have to sign paperwork tomorrow and set up a home inspection so still lots of work but I should not be homeless when my lease runs out.

newgen hut

andrea and I went out looking at houses again today. it's our second trip in as many weeks and I think we found one that we both really like. it cost a little bit more than I was prequalified for but upon calling the bank, I found out that it was actually in our price range. we actually could've gone up a little higher if we had to. well, in any case, we're probably gonna put in an offer on it in a couple of days. it's a pretty nice starter home. 2 bed, 1 bath, with an optional bed room in the attic. 2 car garage with an unfinished basement (finally, a place to put my air hockey table...). its about a five minute walk from downtown olathe and is close to her family and about half an hour east of lawrence so not too bad. it also has a pretty large covered front porch which will be really nice when it rains outside. it needs a little bit of work but other than that, it's pretty much ready to be moved in to. well, that's it for now. we'll see if they accept the offer.

thar be pirates!

but not yet. the trailer doesn't come out till March 19th.

a blast from the past

I was cleaning out the file cabinet tonight to make some more room and came across something some of you may remember:

Boyabus kissabus pretti galorum
Girlabus likabus, wanta somorum!
Poppabus hearabus bigga smakorum,
Kickabus boyabus outta backdorum.
Boyabus limpabus alway homorum.
Swearibus kissabus girli nomorum!

:)

weekend plans

I've got the next three days off and andrea's out of town so what am I gonna do? clean, clean, clean, clean, paint, wii/ what a wonderful life for me.

food pills: way in the future or here today?

what could this be?

let's add water and find out...



it's a ball of tea with a flower wrapped inside!

Pirates of the Great Salt Lake Trailer

"it's that damn Johnny Depp"

Spiders On Drugs

poke Jesus!

well, I finally joined the 21st century and started a facebook page and myspace page. it doesn't have anything on it yet but I'll work on it eventually. anyways, I was looking at pickle's facebook and saw that jesus hernandez was on there and I just couldn't help it. I just had to poke Jesus.

stop kicking the copier...

you just never know...

Wii Sims

it was just too cute. I just had to...and it's coming to the wii!!!

evil monkey

I was in a nostalgic mood tonight so I popped in my transformers movie dvd. after the movie, I had to do some research about the live-action movie they were doing to see who they got to do the voices for optimus and megatron. if you'll look it up in imdb.com, you'll find that Frank Welker, the guy who voiced megatron in the old cartoons and is supposedly voicing megatron in the new movie also did the voice of George (the monkey) in the movie "Curious George" thus proving my theory that monkeys are pure evil. that is all.

I love fresh ingredients

andrea's coming down to lawrence tonight so I thought I'd make us dinner. didn't really know what to make so I thought I'd throw a couple of ingredients together and see what I get. apparently, we're having bowtie spaghetti with italian sausage and bacon in a four cheese sauce. of course, I'm cooking so that means that I'm snacking on the ingredients as well. just got to say raw fresh basil is the best. also, you might want to try raw minced garlic too if you haven't done that before. it tastes totally different when it's not mixed with anything else. there's a peppery/citrusy taste to it. also, asiago cheese and regiano parmeggiono are good. that is all. next time you cook, you should try the ingredients by themselves. well, enough babbling. on to see if anything's burned on the stovetop.

don't mess with optimus

G'Nockthar foolishly rushes the mighty Optimus Prime...




Unfortunately for G'Nockthar, the end result was inevitable...

Narnia? II

just got back inside from being outdoors. here's a little poem I wrote to commemorate the event:

little pellets of ice
falling from the sky
sharp as razor blades
slicing skin from bone
ouch!

on another note. when I got back inside, the power was out...for the second time today (it's back on now). I'm off now to find some candles and matches in case I need them for tonight.

Narnia?

yes, like other Kansas cities within the past month, Lawrence, being the petulant child-city that it is, is also getting its own winter storm (hopefully nowhere near as bad as the ones in western kansas). I think it's supposed to be in the mid 20s today so for my last day of "vacation", I'm gonna be staying indoors, painting, having some sweet fruit tea, cleaning, and playing gladius on the pre-wii (gamecube). if you have to go outside, bundle up.

did you know...?

well, I have my week off this week so I'm here doing laundry and watching the food network. there's a show on right now called world's freakiest food and they're having a segment on muskrats. apparently, according to the show, the catholic church allows you to substitute muskrat for fish on meatless days (i.e. lent). ahhh....it's good to be catholic.

Urban Ninja

This guys is my hero.

Like Scrubs? Like A Charlie Brown Christmas?

Well my friend, this is the video for you. A Charlie Brown Christmas voiced over by the cast of Scrubs.