A very gray day

We finally got around to painting today. Just as we were coming up into the room we looked outside and saw these nasty looking clouds. Since the last time a storm like this rolled threw we ran outside to take pictures.....for the insurance. It was bad last time, real bad so we figured we'd see what we could see before it started. The wind was clicking at recorded gusts over 50mph it rained pretty good. It was crazy to see this storm with such a sharp cut off and it cruised over the neighborhood. You can see my neighbor out recording video since he works for the local TV station.




We did eventually get around to painting some. This was only primer but it not like its any easier. My walls sucked up 1.75 gallons of paint in one bedroom. It was crazy. It took all night but we did eventually get done....at 2am. We got lazy tonight plus another storm rolled through around the time we were going to start and it was flickering the lights on and off so we figured we shouldn't start then it get dark on us. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have it painted and by sunday we'll be moved back in.

July 4th Weekend

For some reason instead of hanging out and doing nothing we chose to work our rear's off again and paint the master bedroom. Now we knew this wouldn't be an easy task since it's not as simply as slap the paint down. First the originals contractors painted everything white to hide all the flaws. We have a torchiere light that burns an a nice 300 watts and it stays beside the bed. By chance while laying there one night with it on I looked up at the walls. It was then I knew when we went to paint this it would be quite the undertaking. So now that you know that you can look at the pictures. After 3 days of mudding, sanding, taping, cleaning and more cleaning we are ready to put down primer tomorrow. We are also planning on trimming out the windows so hopefully I can take some good pictures of that too. My neighbor has a miter saw and a small air gun so it should go pretty quick.

The spots you are seeing is not wet spots. This is mud spots. Thats how bad it is.

Paintball

Mandy and her co-workers played paintball a few week back as a "team building" exercise and had such a good time some decided to go back and play again and invite friends, family and neighbors.

Below is what we all joked as the "before" picture. Note the smiles, lack of sweat and general ora of good paintballing every one has.




This is the about 3 games in. To be honest I really suck at paintball. It's a little odd with my up bringing to point a gun at someone. Now if you were a cute fuzzy animal I'd drop you like a bad habit but people were a little different. The first 2 games I was out in 30 seconds. In game 3 I finally figured this whole deal out and stayed in a little longer. Sure I still went out but I stayed in longer and when I finally walked out I was completely exhausted. As you can see there was a bit of sweating going on.



This is what we all joked as the "after" picture. Notice the lack of smiles and for that matter people. We like to say, "there is no smiling in paintball". Some gave up and went home others decided to give their ammo to the remaining group.


We played until we ran out of ammo. We went through 8000 paint balls between 15 of us. My team finally won by waiting out the compitition. We were all so low on ammo we just waited until we didn't hear the splat after the shot from the other team. When we walked the flag in (we were playing capture the flag) I had 3 rounds and one other guy only had 7 or so if I'm remembering right. We played 7 games total and a week later my legs still hurt...not from the paintball but from the running. So all in all, I recommend it but be prepared to be exhausted.

This is how we Roll

Well, it's a been a few weeks since all this took place but we painted the guest bedroom, got a new matress and bed set for the master, moved the queen to the guest and then this past weekend went out and ordered a small armoir, night stand and head board for the guest bedroom. So now our down stairs bathroom, guest bathroom and guest bedrooms are painted. I' 'm thinking we move into there and paint our room, Mandy's not seeing it quite that way. It's really a scorcher hear these last few days so we'll probably hang out and do....nothing.

Memorial Day weekend

This weekend we worked our rear ends off by installing stone from the side walk to the back of the house. That's 226 stone, we also planted 15 different flowers or shrubs and put down 2 cubic feet of mulch. I was looking for some before and after but couldn't find a before. Maybe I'll dig some up later and post them just as a comparison. I'm sure we have some somewhere. If you look to the left at the tall bush that's where the mulch used to end. My neighbor helped me dig all the grass out and we tried to salvage what we could then replanted it in his yard. That also took a while but he did help me a lot.


This was the last day. This was actually during the last 'phase', the mulch spreading. I got a nice sunburn the day before because I didn't put the sun screen on until late so I had a scarf under a hat today. Mandy and the neighbors were making fun of me but it helped to keep the heat off of my neck.


This is what 2 whipped pups looked like after 3 long days of working. There's Mandy drinking a 'Land Shark Lager' - Jimmy Buffett's beer and myself a Blue Hawaiian. I suggest trying both. When your tired and you have one of each, if you close your eyes you can hear the waves crashing. I also haven't shaved since Wednesday.

Hail Storm

We had a nasty storm system blow through last week. It was pretty rough and kicked up some verified tornadoes. Mandy was home and I was at work. It was a little scary for both of us, primarily because we didn't want our vehicles getting beat to death. Luckily I didn't ride the Harley to work that day.

We had approximately $0.36 worth of hail.

Harley garage door opener

Tonight's update was a week or so in the making. HD (the moco as they like to call them) has a garage door opener. It's $120, involves splicing your harness and work ok at best and doesn't always work on all garage door openers for everybody at worst. So I knew there was a way to get a normal remote wired in. Well, HD triggers there's off the high beam switch so that was a pretty good idea I figured. If I could get a normal remote to work then I'd be in good shape. After searching the internet some I came acorss this little handy diagram. So now all I had to do was find a remote (freebie from boB) and some cheap parts from radio shack. OK, now it's all done I've got total out of pocket less than $5 in this thing. HD wanted $120. The score: the man 0, us 1.


Below is how I mounted all the components. I used 3M double sided tape and put it under my "dash" on the bike. It fits well and doesn't interfere.



Here's everything soldered together. A small relay that fires off the high beam indicator LED. A capacitor that charges and allow the relay to drop out. Then when the relay closes it's the same as pushing the button on the remote for 1/2 second.

Here's where I got into the bike signal at. I skinned back the wires just about 1/2" on the instrument panel. This way I'm not damaging the main harness. If it ever fails, much easier and cheaper to replace.



This is post solder and heat shrink. I pulled the wire out of the mini DT connector then put the heat shrink on. Then I doped the end of it with silicon so it's sealed all around. Just plugged it back into the bike and all is well.


It took longer to keep it neat then it did actually get it wired up. One unexpected event it fires during any movement of the switch where as the it was only supposed to fire when going to high beams, not changing back to low.

The Blue Man Group

Me and Mandy and some friends from work went and saw The Blue Man Group on Friday Feb 29th. Me and Mandy had seen them in Las Vegas and it was pretty awesome so we couldn't pass up a chance to see them in our backyard.

The opening act was Mike Relm. He is a DJ and while the whole DJ club thing is not really something we're into, he was pretty freakin' cool and funny. He had control of the audio but also had everything rigged to video so he could mix it too. The clip below is part of the movie Office Space. This is where Drew walks in a proclaims, "If all goes well I might be showing her my 'O' face!".


OK, not the best pictures in the world but it's shot from a Canon PowerShot A70 at ISO400 at 1/30th of a second, zoomed in from 150 yards, so give me a break. Below is a fairly colorful picture. 2 of the guys drumming away. One had the lights and colors in his drums lighting up. The huge drum in the background shakes the place when he drums it. Sweet.


2 of the guys hijacked the sound and light controls and we were 2 seats away. Sometimes it pays to sit in the back.


The end of the show. Streamers in the air, The Blue Man Group logo in the back ground and in the foreground, Rock Concert movement #37, "Flashing the Floppie the Banjo Clown hand puppet". How much better could it get?!

Lunar Eclipse

Well I didn't get a chance to do much setup before hand and of course the one time everything comes together it's so cloudy it was hard to even figure where the moon was. So, the total eclipse was at 10 and the sky cleared perectly around 10:15. This is what I could scrounge together with little to no experience. I must have taken 20 pictures and stood there for 45 minutes or better. December 2010 I should be more prepared.

Harley Pictures

Here's some pictures of the Harley. I'm hoping I can work with these pictures some and cut the backgound out and get the bike by itself the do something cool with them. Just have to see.

Back from Disney: Jan

These are all pictures from our recent trip. One from each day.

The first day we went to EPCOT then to MGM for Fantasmic. Now I didn't do any clever editing to this, this was shot right after the lite the water on fire and this was shot across the remaining fumes and waves it leaves in the air. Pretty cool huh.



The next day we went to the Animal Kingdom all day then back to the Magic Kingdom. I got the tripod for the fire works. This was shot with the tripod sitting on a trash can and cranked up about 7' off the ground to get above everybody's head. This was a 1/2 second exposure and 5.6 F-Stop. Might have been a little big, could have probably used a smaller F number. This wasn't the "best" picture but out of 200+, I liked it.


The next day we were pretty much exhausted and didn't take to many picturs. So here is one when we saw Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel. This was the point Mandy figured she could be a good paparazzi photographer.


We went to MGM and hung out all day. This was right before the parade. This was the famous director Alberto Dante. You must ask Mr. Dante's permission before taking a picture. Then he asks which of his 137 poses you would like. This was number 99. The MGM street people are a riot.


We were completely exhausted and I was sick on the last day. This was about the only decent picture I got. However, these guys are good and very cool to listen too. Especially as old as instruments are, or at least appear.


Hopefully more pictures to follow once I do some editing to some of the ones I hope came out good.

2 weeks before Christmas

This is a big piece of fine art we have hanging on the wall.....ok, thats a lie. This is a 1000 piece puzzle we put together and swore we'd never do that again. So to keep from having to assemble this again we got this puzzle glue goo stuff and glued it all together. Then we bought a huge frame and piece of mat board and I learned how to mat and frame for the first time. Thanks to Casey for the mat cutter. (So help me I won't frame anything this big again)

Clearly this is the 2nd annual Britton family Christmas tree. It's a good size, the picture doesn't do it justice, but it's covered with ornaments from 1977 until this year.














Since I had the camera out I took a picture of the nice down lit part of our entertainment center. That is our wine glasses from our engagement and wedding....and, how many people do you know that have a glass slipper with their name and date on it, not to mention with, "Happily ever after" on it. (I picked that out myself)

Part of our small collection of Disney stuff. OK, upper left is a piece of stock with Mandy's name on it. Pretty freakin' cool for a birthday present if you ask me. Now she can demand to get things since she does "own" the place. Below that is a giclee' print of DVC. Only available to members, or ebayers. Upper right is a print of the castle with trading pins set to look nice. Below that is an awesome picture we took in sept on the boardwalk around 12:30 am with a tripod and remote. Oh, and the bottom right is my Carolina Hurricanes Stanley Cup Champs poster and game 5 ticket. I was there, they didn't win that game, but it was pretty cool. Thanks to a very cool co-worker he snuck me into the lower bowl area of the arena. So my $120 ticket got upgraded to a $300 just by hanging out at the lower level bar. Still need to hang the poster up.



This is our signed "moonshine" bottles. It's actually signed by Junior Johnson. I never in my life would dream I would have a bottle of moonshine signed by Junior Johnson. I only wish I would have had my camera when I got these signed. We still need to get a bottle to try. These won't get opened.

Disney in Sept (more to follow)

We went to Disney in Sept with 2 other couples from work. Then boB's brother and wife also met us there to hang out for all day Sunday.

Let's go Sorin'! Always a first when you enter the park.

Andy introducing us to Soarin'. We are cleared for take off. {he always looks like this :) }

Mandy is tall enough to ride. We just had to prove it.

2007 (Jan - June)

So, I finally got around to putting the engine back into the S-10. What a better time to do this than 1/17/07. Cold weather, dark, a perfect time. You can't see it but in the corner is a 80k BTU heater.
In March they brought the CAT Chopper by the plant before they gave it to "The Victory Junction Gang" the next day. Don't fret, CAT ordered 2 when this one was built.

The weekend of the Bristol race in March we caught up with our good friend's, the Farmers.

This is Earl's rail cars, he's since sold it, but I like this picture if I had only got the nose in the picture.

We quit working at Advance Auto Parts in May, to celebrate we went to Vegas and took Kenny and Farrah with us. We drove from Vegas to the Grand Canyon. Little heads up, it's a long freakin way to do in a day and back. Oh, and cold up there compared to Vegas. I was also able to get a bunch of nice T-Shirt on that trip. Well, I had to, I left Raleigh with no shirt except the one I was wearing. So I got some every where we went.

The video below is when I finally got around to actually getting the S-10 to start. This isn't the first fire, but this is about the 5th. Amazing what happens when you put good fuel in and clean the fuel injectors from sticking. So this was around June.

Last year in review (Dec 06)

First off, we went to Disney World in early December 06. Had a good time and made some really nice Christmas cards last year. Pretty good picture for a passing stranger (seriously).

I took a photography class and it was pretty fun. Here is a shot from a park in downtown Raleigh.

I'm rebuilding the engine in my S-10. Here's one possibly reason why it failed, or what would have failed. This is what a valve looks like when it's hammered. This happens when rocker arms are out of adjustment.

Random Stuff I've been meaning to share.

This is a crazy video from the Mini Truckin' Nationals in Pigeon Forge, TN from 2000. For those that haven't been to such an event around dark people line the streets to watch the cruise that's 4 lanes wide and just kinda hang out. We were doing the same on this very night. While taping a crowd of people from across the street (because it looked like something interesting was going to happen) out of no where comes this monstrous screeching sound. Hence the video below.

So, now that you've watched it, you have right. The story that we were told was there was a bet the guy in the fire bird couldn't do 3 donuts in the middle of those 3 or 4 lanes. Well, the organized a few dozen people to stop traffic and the fun began. Now the cops show up and he was held at gun point and everybody was run out of the parking building but him and the cop. The cop puts his gun away, shakes the guys hand, tells him it's the craziest thing he's ever seen, if the car so much as moves the rest of the weekend they'd put him under the jail, he drives off and tells him have a nice day. People started throwing money at the fire bird when he came back out. So he probably pocked several hundred dollars.