I was climbing at the gym last night and noticed a couple that I talk to occasionally had on the yellow wrist bands for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I talked to them a bit about the bands and it turns out the woman had actually designed them. I thought that was pretty cool. I'm gonna probably pick one up soon.

We were in Moab a few years ago (I believe it was Moab IV) and there was a slideshow being given by a couple who were traveling the world by bike. It was an amazing show and they seemed pretty cool. They have a website that is over in Japan that hosts their pictures. You should check it out - the Bolivia and Argentina pages have some awesome pictures. I don't know about you, but it makes me want to get some dinero together and head out for a long ride.

After getting a call from my mechanic regarding the laundry list of crap to fix on my car, I've decided to buy a VW microbus. An old one that I can fix. Or at least steal parts from my parent's bus. My repair bill is going to be around $1000, or $1300 if I decide to fix the brakes. Who needs brakes? So I looked on craigslist and found a VW for $1200. Or the price of a new water pump (that was just replaced, I might add), some hoses, a flex disk (WTF?), a boot, transmission seal, thermostat and oil change. I emailed a buddy at work with a link to the bus I want to get. His response? "What a piece of shit. You like that?" I didn't think it was that bad.

Over the weekend I went over to my parents house and went through the last few boxes that I've kept there. I came across a few boxes of notes, letters and cards from high school and college. I was debating about carrying all of those things to my new house that I hadn't looked at since I put them away years ago. My buddy Ron said I should just get rid of all that stuff, no need to keep it all. So I took his advice and spent a few hours looking through birthday cards, neatly folded notes with SSL (sorry so long) written over them. Then I made a fire in the basement (fireplace, I don't just burn stuff on the floor) and started throwing in the papers. The fire got so strong I had to back off about 6 feet and throw the paper in from a distance. I did keep my ream of auto repair slips. It was interesting to look at all of the things I've done to (for?) my car. Funny, she's in the shop now. I have a few shoe boxes full of pictures and negatives from all over the place. Last night I went through and organized all of them. I came across some old pictures my grandfather took on the East Coast. I scanned in a dozen of them and put them up on my photos site. It's neat to look at 60 year old pictures, to see how New York looked. We have a wooden box with all of his negatives. I'll have to go through and scan in those pictures and see how they look. Like a little time capsule.
New York Pictures

I recently put slime filled inner tubes on my road bike - they're supposed to plug up holes as soon as they get punctured. On Monday I was riding home in the rain and heard the dreaded sound of "Pffttt sisssssssssssssssss" as a hole got made in my front tire. I looked down and saw the green slime shoot out and the hole stopped leaking. Amazing, it really worked. The next day I was riding to the rock gym and heard the same sound "Pfffffttt sisssss". Well, I have my trusty tube to plug the hole. I pulled over because it wasn't stopping. I looked at the hole on the top of the tire. No slime, no goo. After the tire went flat I remembered the instructions "When tire gets punctured, rotate tire until the hole is at the bottom." So the goo will fill the hole. I took the flat tube out and pumped it up to get the slime working. I held it upside down and everything. The hole was filled, but so was my valve, I couldn't add any more air. So you know, don't do what I did. Instead follow the directions. I guess they're there for a reason.

So I've been lame and not put up any pictures of my lovely little house. Guess I'm still sore that I lost my dope little camera. So I had to 'borrow' my old camera back from my dad. Here are a few pictures from the house. How cool is that toilet paper holder??

My neighbor lady who was so happy about my lawn finally being worked on went to the big garden in the sky on Sunday. I was outside (working in the yard) when I saw two people wheeling out a body bag. A man came over and told me that she had passed the previous night. Turns out she wasn't doing so well lately and it was just her time. When I saw her last she was pretty sprite and energetic. I'm glad that she at least got to see her neighbor's yard not look like a scene out of Africa. Last night I told my neighbor across the street about the neighbor lady. "Kinda strange to have someone die right next to you," I said. "Shit, that's a shame," he responded. "Guess everyone is getting out of this neighborhood."

I finally got my 5.0 peak horsepower lawn mower today. Here are some before pictures. It's dark out now, so the after pictures will just look like a black room. I had to mow at the 6 setting and when I made my 2nd pass at the 2 setting the engine made a weird noise and died. Well, I figured, I got half of my front lawn done for a $80 mower, not too bad. I turned the sucker over and a strip of sheet metal was broken and had to be removed (it was hitting the blade.) So I started wrenching with it and got nowhere. Then I had the bright idea, "Hey, I still have Vince's grinder! That should take care of this." I whip out the heavy grinder and start going to town. Then I notice all of the sparks going everywhere and the smell of gas from the mower being turned over. I definetly did not want to be one of those guys you see on TV after they do something stupid, so I stopped. I eventually got the metal off by just wiggling it back and forth.
The wonderful front
The Savanna

I had big dreams of getting a lawn mower and taking care of business this weekend. It came through just as well as my last Lotto ticket. I found an used mower for sale ($80) but the guy had to tune it up and sharpen the blades. So I get it today. Instead of mowing, I started edging the lawn with the help of my mom. I used her edger which is pretty much like a flat shovel that you stand on and you take out 5 inches of lawn at a time. As I was hopping up and down on the edger, one of my neighbors came out and said "Thank god! I'm so happy you're finally doing that!" I started to explain myself, telling my dumb story about being busy and not able to get a used mower cos I'm plain lazy. I didn't really care about my story, and I don't think she did either. "Are you going to trim the bushes in the back too?" Yes, eventually I will. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" My lawn is a bit scary, but it's not that bad. I should leave some lawn clippings on her step as a message. We ended up filling 2 1/2 lawn refuse bags from just the edgings. I'm a little aprehensive about how much crap I'm going to have when I do the actual mowings.

For a long time I've thought of RSS feeds as being pretty useless for me. Then I realized I was spending a fair amount of time checking different websites to see if they've changed. Well, this is where RSS comes in. Some blogging software will produce a RSS xml file that gives a summary of what is on the website or webpage. My blogging software, for instance, puts a link on the top right side of my blog that reads XML. The link brings up an XML file that summarizes the last 15 or so entries. Other websites, like slashdot and wired have RSS feeds that you can check (don't check /. more often than every 30 minutes, they end up blocking your IP address.) So instead of manually checking your favorite websites, you can let your RSS aggregator do it for you. I wasn't able to find any decent ones until I upgraded my Opera browser that has a built in "Newsfeeds" reader. All I do is find someones RSS link, click on it and then my browser will automatically import the RSS xml and then monitor that link every X number of minutes. I came across a free web based RSS feed reader today, bloglines. It works well, you type in the URL of RSS feed and it will monitor the feed for you. Plus you can access your feeds from anywhere and you're not tied down to a client sitting on a certain machine. I really think it's nifty that you can have some program do your website checking for you. It could really free up a lot of time if you have tons of sites to visit to see new things.