I hate those people who think they are privileged, who think the rules don't apply to them. A couple of weeks ago, I went to Wendy's with my wife, my bro-in-law and his wife. In the parking lot, there is one long row of angle-parking, then a place for motorhomes and people towing boats and trailers. Well, some privileged asshole in an Expedition, towing a nice boat, decided he didn't have to walk the 100 feet from the boat parking to the restaurant. He took up 6 or 7 parking spots in the angle-parking area, inconveniencing many more people than himself. We went in and ordered, and I just kept looking around the restaurant, trying to figure out which one was the asshole. On my way to a table, holding a tray full of food, some guy was standing up next to his table, asking, "Who needs a straw?" He was in my way, and oblivious to the fact. So as he turned around to get straws for his family, I brushed past him, earning an offended look from him. How dare I get in his way? Well, sure enough, when he and his family got up to leave, they went right to the fancy black Expedition, towing the nice boat.

It's times like that, that I wish I could carry out my own special brand of justice, like a .45 slug to the head. Unfortunately, the lawmakers don't see it my way.

It's always unnerving when somebody from a big and powerful government agency is checking out your website, but it's not so bad when they're just looking for some Sublime mp3s to pirate. :)

140.185.65.166 (ras65166.pint.pentagon.mil) - [21/Sep/2000:19:58:09 -0400] "GET /archives/1999/september.shtml HTTP/1.1" 200 15808 "http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=Sublime+mp3s&hc=0&hs=0" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98)"

I thought Kenwood had started making it impossible to modify their ham radios to transmit on police bands and receive cellular bands, but I just found a mod for my TH-G71A radio. Now I can get myself into a shitload of trouble. :)

NetFlix finally shipped Fight Club yesterday. It's been at the top of my queue for a couple of weeks, but it's been out of stock that whole time, too.

It's raining here, and it's very gloomy. The only good thing about it is there will be plenty of mud to get my truck covered in it. :)

There are only three more weeks until we find out whether the baby is a boy or a girl. My wife's doctor seems to think it'll be a girl, after listening to the heartbeat. I think that's bunk. My boss thinks it'll be a girl, based on how sick my wife was for the first three months. I hope he's dead wrong, too. :)

I still don't really feel like an adult, even with being married, owning a house, and having a baby on the way. But after seeing so many car commercials, I've decided what I want to be when I grow up: a Professional Driver on Closed Course. After all, I do all that stuff anyway, I just don't get paid for it.

While I still like this layout, and don't have thoughts about changing it, I've been playing around in Photoshop a lot lately. I keep designing layouts, then discarding them 'cause I don't have anything to do with them. I helped Irish with his new layout a little (I just cut up the images and wrote the HTML for the layout), and that helped a little. But I just can't stop doing stuff like that.

I really oughta get a job doing web design, but there's definitely nothing near where I live, and it's not likely I'd find an employer who would let me work from home.

Ty ended up not being able to go shooting, so I took my wife out instead. She had never fired a shotgun before, and my shotgun has this nasty habit of firing both barrels at the same time. And while it does it very rarely, it did it this time...almost knocked her on her ass.

Anyway, when it came to slinging a clay pigeon out there, she sucked. The first one hit me on my right ass cheek, the second one hit the ground directly in front of her, and the third one flew straight, but in the wrong direction. I decided I didn't want to waste a whole box of pigeons on teaching her to throw them (if that was even possible), so we just went home. It sucked. gOD, I hope our baby is a boy.

Justin has a new layout up, and I like this one a lot. Though his last one was damn good too. Justin is a good name for a boy, wouldn't you think? I'll have to see how the wife likes it. :)

I added xamichee.net to my links...go check out The James.

Well the elk hunt is nearing, less than a month away now. I dropped $350 on a new freezer today, 'cause I need somewhere to store all the meat I'm going to have. And I'm almost guaranteed to get an elk, since I got an antlerless tag.

I'm going shooting tomorrow with Ty and Brad. I bought a box of clay pigeons and 3 boxes of 16-guage shells. I decided I'm going to sell my 16-guage shotgun, since I could buy three 12-guage pump-action shotguns with the money I make off of it. 16-guage shells are just too damn expensive and hard to come by, whereas 12-guage shells are cheap and come in huge boxes, and are available almost anywhere.

If you're into WWII submarine movies, and have 3? hours to spare, you oughta watch Das Boot. I watched the director's cut on DVD last night, and god damn it was long, but it was worth it. I had heard that it's one of the best submarine (well, in this case, u-boat) movies ever made, and while I haven't seen them all, this is definitely the best I've seen. Although, on the more humorous side, Operation Petticoat has to be my second-favorite. :)

My wife and I already have a girl name picked out for our baby, but we can't think of a single boy name we both like. Anybody out there have any suggestions? For some reason, I don't want a name that can be shortened, like James-Jimmy-Jim, or Johnathan-John, etc. And of course, I'm ruling out all non-names, like fucking Skyler. That's not a fucking name, that's something some fucking hippie made up when they were dropping acid.

We'll find out the gender of our baby in just over a month, so this may all be pointless. But damn, I hope it's a boy.

I was just sitting here with a bottle of E&J brandy, tapping my fingernail on it and turning it sideways to hear the tone change as the air bubble went from the neck to the bottom of the bottle. It was quite entertaining, and I haven't even drank any yet.

While I was drinking my third 34 oz. Sprite yesterday, I started getting a headache. And I realized that always happens when I drink a lot of Sprite. My head only hurt when I had the taste of Sprite in my mouth. So I'm back to Dr. Pepper today.

At the junkyard, I found an '81 Ford with the parking brake intact and working well. The engine compartment and interior were almost completely stripped, so it was easy getting the brake unbolted from the firewall. But there was a bolt under the dash that was a pain in the ass, 'cause I didn't have a 5/32" socket. After trying with pliers and various other tools, I just broke the part of the dash that was blocking my way, then used a crescent wrench. After that I thought I was finished, but there was too much tension on the brake cable, and I couldn't get it disconnected from the brake assembly. If the truck still had rims and tires on it, I could have crawled under and disconnected the cable easily, but the frame of the truck was almost sitting on the ground. So I had to cut the cable, and that was a pain in the ass too. I had some cutters capable of cutting through cable that thick, but they're lost somewhere. So all I had were the cutters on my needle-nose pliers, and it took me 20 minutes or so just to cut/tear the cable.

After all that work, out in the sun, I was sweating like mad, and I needed something to drink. For some reason, Dr. Pepper didn't sound very refreshing, and Sprite sounded damn good, so that's what I got. Maybe the sun temporarily fried my brain...

When they put up all those signs between Price and Spanish Fork, warning of increased traffic enforcement, they weren't kidding. I saw four UHP cruisers on my way home today, when I usually see none, or occasionally just one. Luckily, my radar detector saw them before I did. :)

After several years of drinking Dr. Pepper, today I decided I was sick of it. So now, I guess I'm a Sprite man.

I really should be in bed right now. I have to get up for work in 4? hours, but I'm just not that tired. I'm sure I'll have plenty of work to keep me busy (err...awake) tomorrow, 'cause I'm working in the office, and they've always got a lot for me to do there.

I'm also going to the junkyard tomorrow to get that parking brake for my truck. It sucks ass not having a parking brake...I can't leave my truck to get out and do something, like turn the hubs in or run in to Gas-N-Go to get a drink, without throwing it in gear and shutting it off. Pluh...automatic transmissions are for girls. :)

I wouldn't have thought they had all that much off-roading in Europe, but apparently it's bigger over there than I thought. Check these out. They're conversions from Range Rovers, and I'd sure like to have one. :) I don't know how comparable they are to a built up Jeep, but they look like they'd perform similarly. Almost every single one has 33x12.5 BFG Mudders, and they have more front and rear clearance (higher bumpers). Dunno if they're street legal, though...

I'm surprised I've never gotten reported to the police for my bad driving (at least not to my knowledge). It's not that I'm a bad driver, I'm just a rude driver.

Yesterday I was driving to Scofield reservior to do some fishing, and there's a place in Price Canyon where the westbound lane opens up to two lanes. There was a semi and about 4 cars in front of me, and all of the cars went straight for the left lane to pass the truck. I stayed in the right lane, 'cause I know how stupid people are, and I gunned it to pass them all on the right. Well, of course, some woman in a blue Neon was barely going faster than the semi, and she was holding up everybody else. One person, in a faster car than my truck, shot around her on the right, but I had to get in behind her, or else rear-end the semi (I had already passed two of the cars). I was pretty close behind her, but I kept on the gas, trying to herd her around. She was going 5 mph under the speed limit, and she was stupid enough to tap her brakes to get me to back off.

I know I was being rather rude, but it's ok when the person you're being rude to is being stupid, right? Unfortunately, if somebody were to report me, the cop would take the stupid person's side every time, 'cause it's not against the law to be stupid. She was oblivious to her surroundings (which is a really bad thing when you're driving), while I was paying strict attention to everything, and she comes out the good guy.

If I was a cop, I would give out tickets to people like her, 'cause that's the kind of people that really cause incidents.

I bought a shoulder strap for my .30-06 (Remington Model 7400), and it was scary attaching it to the rifle. I had to drill two holes in the stock, and I was just scared that I would mess up and screw the stock up big time. It would have been easy if I was using the proper equipment, like a drill press and a padded vise. But I had the rifle sitting across my lap, using a cordless drill, so there was plenty of opportunity for me to screw up.

I paid over $600 for the rifle, and I'm sure a replacement stock would cost at least half that. I've had it since I was 17 years old, and it's taken me until now to get tired of lugging it around in my hands instead of carrying it over my shoulder.

My parking brake quit working in my truck last week, and I finally got time today to find out what was wrong. It turns out that one of the brackets that holds the entire assembly together is broken, so I have to replace the unit as a whole.

I called the Ford dealer, just for laughs, to see how much a new assembly costs. Well, they don't even carry them anymore, which isn't that surprising, even though they used the same assembly on all Ford trucks between something like 1970 and 1989. So I'll have to go to a junkyard and find one that's in reasonably good shape. It took me over an hour to remove mine, 'cause the bolts that go through the firewall are nearly impossible to get to from the outside. So I expect I'll have to spend several more hours removing an assembly from a junked truck and installing it on mine. Oh joy.

I've been signed up with NetFlix for 6 months now, and lately I've been disappointed with their service. They removed their check-in option, so now they have to receive the last movie I sent back before they'll ship the next in my queue. And while they say it takes them 4-6 hours to ship the next movie, it usually takes them over 24 hours.

I actually thought about cancelling, but I figured I ought see how bad it really is. In the past 6 months, I've rented 70 movies from them, which equals 11.7 movies per month. Divide that into the $20 monthly fee, and it comes out to $1.71 per movie. Not too bad, I guess.

Usually, my movies sit around for at least a day, sometimes two, before I get around to watching them. So I could be getting more value out of their service, but I guess even with no more check-ins and the slow turn-around time, it's still worth it.

I watched Apocalypse Now last night. It's the most fucked up movie ever made. It had a lot of badass actors in it, like Martin Sheen, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, and Scott Glenn, but not even they could make up for the strangeness of it all.

There was the usual complement of violence in this movie, but only the slaughter of the water buffalo disturbed me for some reason. In fact, the whole ending was just strange, and anticlimactic. I was wanting Sheen's character to call in the airstrike and get it over with, but instead he goes phsycho and slices & dices Brando. It was all just very strange, and seemingly pointless. Either that, or I missed the point entirely.

Check this out:

Wow.

I really like this layout, and I swear that I'll keep it for a long time. A relatively long time, anyway. I moved the comments to the heading above each post, sorta stealing an idea from Andy.

Theseus suggested that I oughta make all my old layouts available for download, like in a ready-to-go zip file. Just paste your links and news-include in there, and you're hooked up. I had thought about doing something like that, but his way will be easier...so over the next week or two, I'm going to be cleaning up the code on all my old layouts, taking screenshots of them put together, and putting them in their own section. The hard part for whoever uses them will be making a logo, since they sure as hell can't just use mine. :)

I'm getting used to the fact that some undesirables won't hesitate to steal a layout that I put a lot of time and hard work into, but I never thought it would get this out of hand. C'mon people, this isn't funny anymore, nnnnnkay?

I actually made a new layout for this site, just three days after I put the white cross one back up. And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna use it, unlike the one I gave to my boyz. This new one is entirely black and greys, but I might add some color before I throw it up. I just hope nobody steals this one... :)

You wouldn't think there was enough going on in the country to warrant a website about handguns and carry-conceal laws, at least not a site that's updated several times daily. But apparently there is, and it's all over at packing.org.

Heh, they're lucky they registered that domain name before...well, somebody else did. :)

I bought a gun rack for my truck, and the packaging is pretty damn funny. First of all, it's an "E-Z Mount Rack," like all racks should be. Secondly, it "Dismounts in Seconds!" Great, time to roll over and take a nap. But last of all, there are "No Holes to Drill!" Wait a minute...this isn't sounding so good, now...

Hahah...this whole stolen layout thing between Solo and Theseus, and now The Abode, has me laughing out loud. I'd jump on the bandwagon myself, if only I had the original PSD, like I'm sure they did. :)

Oh, and real sites open their links in new windows...either that or I'm a lazy bastard, too lazy to shift-click.

Yeah, I put my new-old layout up. Most people seemed to like this one, and those who didn't got banned (I think). :) Anyway, there have been a lot of goings on in the e/n world that I've neglected to mention.

Justin got a new layout. A long time ago. Solo is back! Jack (er...Mark) is back, with star.1. Sloppy Rage stole my layout! :) I added a link to Zethon.net. Oh, and The Bloodhound Gang kicks all ass. Hooray for boobies.

I decided that at least once during this vacation from work, I'd get drunk. Really drunk. And I'm in the process of doing that right now. :) I'm about 1/3 into a limeade & rum daquiri (a huge one), so I'm just beginning to space off a bit. I actually drink quite a bit, but it's usually only a glass of wine here, or a bottle or two of beer there. But I rarely ever get sloshed.

Traci and I went to the San Rafael Swell today. It was way hot down there, and the San Rafael River was really muddy and rather low, so we didn't do any fishing like we had planned. But we had fun, and took a lot of pictures.

In fact, I've taken a lot of pictures in the past several days, which I will scan in and put in the pictures section of my site...which I badly need to redesign. The main page takes a long time to load with all the thumbnails, so I guess I need to break everything up into categories.

God, McDonald's is pure shit. I don't know how I ever let my wife talk me into going there.

We went for a relatively short drive today (compared to yesterday's, anyway), and saw some (big!) bear footprints in the mud. I took a couple pictures, but we were too chicken-shit to stick around much longer than that. It was up Indian Canyon, just 40 or 50 yards down a dirt road that branches off from the paved road. If shit like this keeps up, I'll be afraid to be anywhere in the wilderness alone (or without plenty of firepower).