Live from Disney Land!

So, after 5 days of being here I discovered we have free internet at the condo, go figure. Any how we are here in California. The time change is killing us. Let me give a quick wrap up of whats happened:
Arrived in Cali on Saturday, got the rental car, punched in the address on boB's GPS (thanks boB) and away we went. Checked in, dropped our stuff and went to the bus stop to get a quick preview of Disney Land. First impression, how cute, it's like a mini-magic kingdom. Oh wait, the prices are still 100%. Everybody out here walks around with there chest stuck out and chin high like, "yea, disneyland is where it all started!" Where as anybody that has been to WDW has figured out Walt went to FL and got it right. It's just odd, every thing is small, rides are shoved into odd places, just plain weird. We also found out most of California goes to the park on saturday nights. We bailed around 9 I think. We only rode 3 things in 4 hours.











Sunday was a little better, for about an hour. We went to Hollywood. Wow, the glitz, the glamor, the homeless bum sleeping in the nicely trimmed hedges. Yea, hollywood can stay out here. This place is creepy. Wallet in the front pocket, carry less than $20 and separate your credit cards between people so when (not if) you get mugged you might still stand a chance of making it home. We walked a fair amount of the walk of fame, this things are apparently not as pristine as you think, everybody has one. It didn't see Jesco's name, I was disappointed. It seems the crime fighting business doesn't pay, as you can see below. My spidy sense detects unemployment...









Monday we went to Burbank to see a live taping of Jay Leno. We were all fired up, sure we'd be first in line, get the floor seats, shakes hands, talk cars, etc, but none of that happened. We took the back lot tour, cash only, separate register within NBC....guess NBC can't afford one register with full credit for both tours and merchandise. Anyhow, we got out of that and rounded the building to find we were about 100 people behind. Also found out on the tour about half the 350+ seats are reserved. However, Mandy did get to sit beside "the best seats" because there were picked specifically for Maris, Jay's wife, and they fill them if she doesn't show....she didn't show. Went to the Santa Monica pier and watched the sunset. Pretty nice all in all, cold as hell too. Smog made it hazy but still yet, I can say I've done it.









Tuesday was the San Diago zoo. Been to Animal Kingdom at Disney, then save your money. Not much to tell. Did get to see a black jaguar, a lynx and those crazy little mear cats. Took the Pacific coast highway back and that was kinda cool. Stopped at a wienerschnitzel and got a milk shake.









Wednesday was back at Disneyland. We followed our unofficial guide touring plan and jumped ran to space mountain, broke/closed. So we ran over to Nemo. That took 45 mins in line. It was so so. One of those nice to say I road it type things. Nothing to particular to tell. Lost of stuff closed due to halloween but that is to be expected.





Went to California Adventure on Thursday. It was nice, minus the fact every other thing was closed or broke and working on it. We did get to ride Toy Story Mania, very cool. Well worth the wait in line. As you can see here the photopass photographers are a little more laid back here. They put me in the ears. We did leave the park and went and "freshened up". Then we went to Steakhouse 55 and had a good meal. Not stellar service but a good meal. We were glad we got a discount with our Disney credit card, I'll say that. Then we went and got some more points at downtown disney. Vacation is so hard.





It's now 12:30 local and 3:30 eastern time so I'm off to bed. The morning will suck as usual and it will be our last day in the park. Got to see the fireworks, might convince Mandy to take the tripod tomorrow but I doubt it. Reporting back soon, Scott and Mandy.

ZZ Top

We went to the ZZ Top and Brooks and Dunn show tonight. It was awesome. So first let me explain the tickets. We had good ticket, section 6, row O, seat 1 and 2. But I checked, by chance, ticketmonster on tuesday morning (tuesday same week) and found section 2, row B, seats 28 and 29. Cha Ching, those were bought instantly. Some poor schuck behind me paid $1000 for 4. I sold the other ones at a loss at $80 but thats OK, we had 2nd row. So we figured with the selling at a loss and the good ones we had $200 for 2 tickets. Now the awesome part is toward the end of Brooks and Dunn they let us stand right at the stage. Same for ZZ Top except it was about halfway threw their set.

Now during the Brooks and Dunn segment, which was first, there was a ton of girls rushing the the stage. One well endowed and proud girl kept showing off her good DNA she was blessed with. After that we tended to get a lot more attention from the band on that side of the stage. As a matter of fact Kix Brooks pretty well parked himself on our side of the stage about 4 feet away for the rest of the show. After B&D were over you could see the entire section talking about the situation and cracking up about it. She got a guitar pick. If I would have known it would got me a guitar pick, I would have lifted my shirt too. Who knew.








I'll post more when it's not 1am after the show.

First Coat of Paint

So we wimped out the last 2 days but finally got off our rear ends and put the first coat of paint up tonight. It came out really nice but will need a 2nd coat for sure. So to update our colors and progress we took what we like to call "Fuquay Gothic". Of course when I sat down to edit this at 2am it occured to me Mandy's eye's are backward compared to the picture and I'm to lazy/don't know, how to fix it. None the less I still think we pulled off a cool picture and really nice color. It looks awsome with the new bed frame. Wait until we paint the "custom" entertainment center we made.

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.