You’ve probably been wondering where the hell I’ve been, but I’m still around! Just been very, very busy. About the only thing I have to update you guys on is the progress on the house since Katrina. It’s coming along pretty good now as you can see from the photos below, the folks may be able to move back into it within the next few months. Yes, they’re living in the FEMA trailer out in the front yard! Talk about cramped living space, omg it’s just tiny. Right now they’re having trouble getting somone to come out and do repairs on it, the floor near the bathroom is rotten and about to fall through because of a water leak.

This photo was taken right after the sheetrock was all pulled out not long after Katrina

Here’s the same camera angle shot today, now with sheetrock! Amazing huh?

Here’s a good shot showing how high the house and slab was raised, the A/C unit is on stilts!

And the new deck in the rear looks great!

Anyway, Mardi Gras season has come and gone and I didn’t bother to attend any of the parades. I guess after you’re seen hundreds of them it gets to be the same old, same old. Know what I mean? And besides, if you’ve seen one throng of drunken tourists stumbling down Bourbon St, you’ve seen them all. LOL

I’ve pretty much settled into the house I’m renting, love the place actually. It’s nice, quiet and cozy. I built my mom a new PC for Christmas, she seems to like it much better than the old one which was running Win 98, this one runs XP. The new one is 3 times faster and has lots of cool features the old one doesn’t. My mom is pretty good with her computer, amazes me sometimes with the stuff she knows how to do.

Sometimes though she cracks me up. Today she called and said her email wasn’t working and if I knew what was wrong. After asking her a couple questions it was obvious she didn’t have an internet connection. When I asked her if she could view any web pages she told me the internet was disconnected because the workers were putting in new sheetrock upstairs. Well mom, I think that might just be the problem! You must have an internet connection to receive emails, lol. Love you mom! (She reads my blog)

Well folks that’s all I got, hope you and yours have been fine and I’ll be stopping by to see how ya’ll are! Take care and be good!!

Recently I happened to notice that the label in one of my favorite pair of jeans stated that they were made in Pakistan. I was shocked! I quickly went to my closet and looked at the inside labels on the rest of my Levi jeans, they were all made in some foreign country. How could this be? Blue jeans were invented here, Levi Strauss was an immigrant that started his original business in San Francisco and his now famous jeans were invented by him in 1873. I realize that their jeans are a worldwide favorite and it does make sense to manufacture them in other places beside the USA, but I do not sit well with them being imported into the USA from foreign lands.

Dammit, Levi jeans are an American institution and importing them is akin to importing apple pies from China (if they were, the pie tins would be lead lined). Now, I’m the kind of person that prefers my clothing labels to be sewn on the inside, I do not believe in sporting “prestige” labels for companies that manufacture the goods. I payed for them and I do not like the idea of being a walking billboard. But one label that I’ve never minded being displayed was the little red tab on the back pocket of my jeans, but now I don’t know whether I should be embarrased or ashamed to wear them.

I looked up the history of Levi Strauss and Company and they have a nice write up with a timeline of all the companies important events which you can read here “History of Levi’s“. The glaring omission is their move to manufacture overseas and import jeans into the USA. Apparently they’re ashamed of it to, it’s like a dirty little secret. Shame on you Levi’s, you’ll never be the same…

Hope you guys had a great holiday and have a happy new year!

Hope you guys have a great holiday week, and that Santa brings you lots and lots of goodies!!

Life has been rather mundane around here lately. There’s not much to report. Seems like all I do is sit at my desk and write code and edit web pages all day long. That’s a good thing but it does get boring at times! The exception was Jules coming to visit about 2 weeks ago, we spent most of a day touring New Orleans and the French Quarter. It was a lot of fun and even though I’ve seen every square inch of N.O. many times over it’s kind of cool to sort of see it through the eyes of someone that’s never been here.

We had the obligatory cafe au lait and beignets at the French Market in the morning then later we stopped and had lunch at the Desire Oyster Bar and Bistro in the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon St. The meal was quite good, I chose the Crawfish Etouffee and Jules ordered the Cajun Shrimp Alfredo. It was actually quite inexpensive, if you’re ever in town, you should check it out. Tres good! Anyone else coming to New Orleans, be sure to let me know and we can meet up too!

I got something rather interesting in the mail the other day, a notification from the local government that a sex offender has moved into my neighborhood, about two blocks away. Even has the guys photo on the card! I think this idea should be expanded to include ex-cons that were convicted of violent crimes, home invasions, domestic violence and burglaries as well. Wouldn’t you like to know that your neighbor was once a jailbird? Or would that be carrying it too far?

That’s about all I have folks, see I told you there was nothing to see here! LOL I’ll leave you with this cartoon that I thought was hilarious…

I’m feeling much, much better since my surgery. I still have some mild pain when I move around, enough to make me wince occasionally but it’s bearable. I can’t say much for the scar, it’s going to be one of my uglier ones I think. Not that any of them look great or anything like that, but you know what I mean. But enough about that, here’s some news you can use!

Those who’ve been following the two plus year saga of life after Katrina will be amazed to hear that work has actually begun on repairing the folks house. Lo and behold, FEMA waves it’s mighty, magical bureacratic powers in the breeze for what seems like an eternity and stuff actually gets done. Are you amazed or what? What, you don’t believe me? I actually have photographic proof of this strange and unusual phenomenon in action.

In this photo you can see the huge mess that comes from tunneling under the foundation.

Here’s what one of the holes looks like that they’re digging to be able to reach the pilings under the house to get it jacked up. It’s going to be raised 3 feet off the ground and it will take about 6 weeks.

Of course the interior still looks like this, but hey, what do you want? It’s only been two years! Give the govmint a chance will ya! They’re giving it their best!

Of course my mom is ecstatic now that work has begun in earnest. All the planning she’s been doing on the interior is now going to become a reality, she get’s to redecorate the entire interior with all new stuff. It’s going to be a nice home once again, one of these days…

Hope you guys are having a good weekend!!!

Just a quick update to let you guys know the surgery went just fine. I got home yesterday evening and I’m glad I didn’t have to stay overnight. The new incision is about 5 inches long and they used surgical super glue to hold it back together on the outside but I do have some self-dissolving stitches on the tear internally. And yes, the pain medication is pretty decent but it still hurts like crazy. Especially when I woke up this morning after the pain killers wore off overnight. I felt like a dump truck had run me down then backed over me a couple more times for good measure LOL.

I am able to get up and walk around but it’s very limited. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to work in a few days. Thanks everyone that stopped by for the nice comments and concerns on my condition in the previous post. I’ll be back!!

I just can’t seem to stay away from doctors and hospitals. I’ll be going in for a one or two day stay tomorrow, Monday the 29th for some minor surgery. The incision from my liver transplant from 3 years ago has come apart internally in my right side just below my ribs and must be repaired. As you can imagine I’m not too thrilled about that! You would think after 3 years of healing that you wouldn’t have to worry about such things but apparently not.

I know how it happened too, I was working out at the gym the morning of the day I noticed it. It doesn’t hurt much, just a bit sensitive but there’s the danger of an internal infection if I don’t get it fixed right away. It couldn’t hardly come at a worse time since I’m so backed up with blog design requests right now. Actually, when would it be a good time? LOL And this is after my doctors have urged me to get more exercise and lose a few pounds. This what I get for listening to doctors? I think it was all part of their evil plan to operate on me again. They just can’t get enough of me.

So, bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be headed across town to get sliced up again, hopefully it will be just as minor as he claims. Just a few stitches maybe a small synthetic skin patch but they still have to cut me open to get to the tear so it’s gonna hurt for quite a while. No physical activity for at least 6 weeks!! Just when I was totally getting into the groove of working out at the gym!!

It’s Electric Shock Season Again YAY!! Not Really…

Every winter it’s the same old thing, every thing metal that I touch shocks the crap out of me. Today I felt my first shock of the season. The worst item is car doors. I can pretty much depend on it, just getting in and out will give me quite a jolt, it makes me hate to touch anything with my hands.

Often I’ll use my jacketed forearm or elbow to push a door open or closed to lessen the jolt. Sometimes I can build up a nice charge that will jump as much as an inch across! Bright enough that you can see and I hate it!! Anyone have any tips on how to stop it? It doesn’t seem to matter what I’m wearing or type of shoes or even if I’m walking on concrete, wood or carpet. I always get shocked. Annoying!!

I’ll give you guys an update on my condition in a few days, hopefully he’ll give me something good for pain!! hehe

I noticed about 2 weeks ago my primary PC was starting to act kinda wonky on me. I actually have three including the laptop but the two desktops are in constant use with the slower one (1400 mhz) acting as a backup. I built both of them myself and they were getting kind of old and tired and I knew it. Now it was looking like it might fail on me any day. And since I make my living on my computer I can’t afford to be without it. The primary one was about 6 years old, a 2600 mhz AMD and it was as fast and as powerful as you could get back then. It has served me extremely well over the years.

In computer years though, 2600 mhz is a virtual dinosaur so again I decided to go as fast and powerful as I could. The new one I built this past week is another AMD running at 6000+ mhz with a 160 gig sata 2 hard drive and 2 gigabytes of ddr2 memory. In other words blazing fast. The old machine would take almost 30 seconds to open my Photoshop CS2 program, the new one does it in about 2 seconds. What an amazing difference!

Building it was not without it’s problems though. I ordered all the components online and then carefully assembled everything. Plugged it in, turned it on and… nothing! It refused to boot up, no beeps, no post! Arrgh!! Next came lots of swearing as I tried to figure out which one of the new parts was faulty. It turned out to be the new motherboard. I ended up sending it back for exchange but I couldn’t wait two weeks for them to send another so I ended up buying one locally. Anyway, it now works and works quite well and I’m a happy camper again! Yay!! Hopefully this one will last me another 5 or 6 years.

Does anyone else dislike Nancy Grace on CNN as much as I do? She is very irritating, just the sound of her indignant voice is enough to make me go change the channel. I hate the way she badgers people on the air, people that are just witnesses to her story and are trying to be helpful. She treats them like dirt. One night she was questioning someone that had a stutter and she actually mocked his stuttering! She acts as though everyone she talks to on air is her own personal doormat. By the way I found that photo on the ‘net, it’s not one that I made up, LOL.

How about showing some social grace, Nancy Grace?

This photo just cracks me up and makes me wonder what the hell is going on here? LOL

I’ve been crazy busy and here’s a few new template designs I’ve done recently, Nappily Evah Aftah and two templates here for the same blog My Juxtaposition . The ones I did are named Many Faces and Butterflies, you’ll have to use the theme switcher to see them both. And another new one here for Unrestricted and a new one over at A Whole Lot of Nothing.

It’s Friday folks!! Hope you guys have a great weekend!!

Yes, I’m a bad boy! I’ve been neglecting this thing horribly. And I’ve been neglecting visiting you guys too. Did ya miss me much? LOL And yes, the photo of the escalator in the previous post is fake! I found the image on the ‘net. My fitness center does not have an escalator!!

I was flipping thru the TV channels the other day and landed on the Cartoon Network for a few minutes. What struck me was the advertising for kids snacks and candies, etc. and I realized that what they put up is just as bad or even worse than cigarette advertisements in it’s own way. Every ad you see is geared toward making kids think that snacking out on all that crappy junk food is fun, exciting and that they’re just not cool unless they do it too. Your childs head turns into a giant strawberry, grape or watermelon, or you soar thru the air from sheer excitement because of the flavor rush or they visualize it as near hallucinogenic or pseudo-psychedelic experiences just from biting into a piece of their mouth watering candy. How can children resist that kind of propaganda? The truth is that they don’t need any snacks at all, not a damn one, yet they’re made to feel that they can’t live without it.

Yeah, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. The hurt comes when your child weighs three hundred pounds before the age of 10. And that’s just a prelude to a lifetime addiction to junk food which in turn sets them up for high cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes by the time they’re 30 years old. Fun my ass. More people in this country die every year from heart related complications than those from tobacco related products yet we sit back and watch it happen. Where’s the outcry people?

Americans are no longer the tallest people in the world on average, but we’re still the widest!

In other news, Nanner came to N.O. over the weekend and it was great seeing her again. Nanner and her cousin and I walked around the French Quarter for a little while on Sunday and stopped in at the Clover Grill for burgers. The next day I picked her up for lunch and we went to the 615 Cafe that has some of the best fried catfish in the city. It’s an out of the way joint that’s known only to the locals and the food is always great. We only got to spend a couple hours together but it was still good fun. Good to see you again hon!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the gym to work off some of that candy I ate earlier…. Have a great weekend!!!

I joined a fitness center yesterday, yeah finally. My fat ass was threatening to take over the entire house. Apparently, sitting in front of a PC all day long is not conducive to good fitness. Who woulda thunk it? Actually, I could use losing about 15 maybe 20 pounds but it’s the exercise that I’m more concerned about. I get winded just watching other people exercise on TV. Now that’s bad.

I really like the place so far, it’s got a nice indoor swimming pool, a huge hot, bubbling whirlpool and sauna. And rows and rows of all manner of modern human torture exercise machines. Located in a nice modern building with private parking, trainers and a nice friendly staff less than a mile from home. I was lucky to find one that had escalators out front too. You know it’s swanky if it has escalators!! LOL

Here’s a couple of the trainers, a couple of really nice guys, but they have the strangest accents.

I did some starter workouts yesterday and now I’m just starting to feel the aches and pains. I’m looking forward to my next visit, maybe in a few weeks. Just kidding!!!! I’ll be going back later today for more fun.

In other news, the new house is great, I’m really enjoying the place. Unfortunately, I’m still not finished unpacking. I’ve got boxes that I haven’t even opened yet. Frankly, m’dear, I’ve just been too busy to give a damn. Blogs Gone Wild is doing fantastic and I’ve got a lot of new stuff in my portfolio and I’m working on lots more. I think I work too may hours, I really need to get out more!

Maybe I’ll go do something fun this weekend, just don’t know what. Anyway, I hope you guys have a fun filled weekend!! Laterz!!