What a beautiful day for the end of January.  Warm, sunny, a nice breeze…   and what am I doing?  I’m down in the basement with a fire going.    Actually I’m coming and going from down here to up there, taking advantage of the good mood that the nice weather has inspired in me, and trying to get some crap done around here that I’d really rather not have to do.

First thing is loading up my car with about 3 week’s worth of laundry for a trip to the laundromat.  I’ve been putting it off, but still it is only three baskets full, but gah…  hours spent at the laundromat feel like days.  I just talked to the plumber a minute ago, and it looks like the beginning of next week is when they’ll come to do their thing and then hopefully I’ll be good to go. 

After that’s done I’ll be making at least two trips in town with a car full of kitchen stuff to drop off at one of the thrift store bins.  I probably could get them to come out here for a pickup, but I don’t want them to nose through each box and decide what they will or won’t take.  None of it is trash, but there are a lot of glasses, jars, pitchers, and containers - among other things.

Then there are other things to keep me busy.  A doctor appointment, a trip to the grocery store, bank stuff to tend to, a trip to LS to track down a sweeper bag, a possible run up to Columbus to test drive a few cars, and then hopefully sometime between all of that I can talk my cousin into giving me a haircut. 

How about rather than trying to get the wealthy to pay more in taxes, the government stops spending so much friggin’ money so the lower brackets can pay less taxes. 

Heh… this was definitely me at that age.

Technically they aren’t pictures, photos, snapshots, or whatever you would normally call a traditional digital picture.  These are actually individual frames taken from the 720p HD video I shot at the Skillet concert.

Click HERE for the slideshow that will open in a new window.
(Tumblr won’t let me embed slideshows anymore.)

The stills all had an original resolution of 1280x720, which is the resolution of the videos, but on most of them I did do some cropping that reduced their dimensions a bit.  Next time I’ll shoot in 1080p, which will give me a resolution of 1920x1080 for the video and any stills I might wanna rip from it. 

Other than the problems that it has with capturing extremely loud music without distortion, I’m really starting to love this little camera. 

*laugh*

The Skillet concert at Winter Jam was AWESOME just as their shows always are.  This makes my fourth one in less than a year.  Jim and I went with a small army of people this time…  there were eleven of us, including me and him.      Some of the artists that played before Skillet were okay, but their shows were nothing compared to what Skillet does.

Jim and I both recorded the show from our front row seats…  and while my video is a little better, since it records in widescreen HD, his audio is definitely better.  I don’t know why, but the older Canon cameras just have a better ability to tolerate the volume of the subwoofers and stuff that we were right in front of.

But still, I’m happy with what I’ve got… 

(Watch ‘em now before YouTube yanks ‘em for copyright issues heh)

On the above player, it actually has all of my clips from the show in it.  When you want to go to the next video from the concert, just click on the little “next” icon on the lower left.  You can also click the little playlist icon near the middle/right to skip around between the tracks.

It’s funny how things like this are meaningful to a fan, but Korey and John both came over and made eye contact more than a couple times during their performance.  It helped that Jim was in his Squirtman costume, and they know him from the nearly dozen concerts of theirs that he’s been to.    John pointed at him, as if to acknowledge him, a couple times too.

After the show we all went out and invaded a Perkins restaurant over by Jim’s house, so I didn’t end up getting home until almost 3am.  And of course when I woke up this morning I felt like I had been run over by a truck.  *laugh*  Head banging when you have a fused neck is obviously a bad idea, but ya can’t really help it when you are there and caught up in the moment. 

As much fun as it was, there was still a sad moment when they played “Those Nights” because that song had some significance for me and Cassi.    We were originally supposed to go to this concert together, but that didn’t end up working out.  During that song I was wondering if she was there too somewhere.  Hopefully she ended up getting her brother to go along like she planned.

But as for Skillet, it was “all video” for me this time.  I’ve taken plenty of pictures of them over the last few shows, so I figured I’d test my camera and see how it would do with all the noise.  (The answer:  Not good, but at least tolerable heh)  But for all the other artists that played before them, I did try to get some good shots.  Once I dump the pics from the memory cards I’ll see if I’ve got any good stuff and upload it to Flickr if I do.

Okay, here’s a rundown of the more notable things that I got at the auction the other day.  Keep in mind that I got all of this, along with a lot of other stuff that isn’t worth mentioning, for $40.    And half of that was spent on just one box of stuff that I really wanted…  but more on that in a minute.

I’m gonna throw everything into an unsorted list here, along with the prices that these things go for new or on eBay right now.  I think you’ll agree I did okay.

• Resident Evil Afterlife 27” x  40” Movie Poster ($10 eBay)
• Laminated 3’ x 5’ Street Map of Columbus OH ($???)
• Two Rocketfish SPX15 Bluetooth Speakers ($70 ea / new)
• Rocketfish Mobile Phone Mount ($25 new)
• A/V Composite Cable for iPod ($20 new)
• Rocketfish Pivot Stand for Tablets ($20 new)
• Vintage Quacky II Phone in Box like on Jersey Shore ($50 - $150 eBay)
• Box Full of Various Power Supplies and Extension Cords ($???)
• Box Full of XL Men’s Long Sleeve Shirts including South Pole ($???)
• Several High End Men’s 2XL Long Sleeve Washable Silk Shirts ($???)
• Reproduction (1989) Vintage-Look Radio ($???)
• Box Full of Girl’s Newborn-to-Six Months Clothes ($???)
• Window Painting / Etching Kit w/Dozens of Stencils ($40 eBay)
• Large Binder FULL of Plastic Ball Card and Page Protectors ($50 eBay)
• Box of Misc Tablecloths, Placemats, and Notebooks ($???)

That’s all that I can remember right now…  heh…  but yeah, it was quite a haul.  And like I was saying, $20 of the $40 that I spent was just for the small lot of Rocketfish stuff.  But with those speakers being worth at least fifty bucks a pop, I couldn’t pass them up.  The other tech stuff was just gravy. 

I can’t believe that I was able to get that duck phone (along with some other crap) for only five bucks.  Apparently I was the only Jersey Shore fan that was there that night, because I immediately recognized it from the show and figured that it was probably worth something.

Jim’s dad wrote him an original acoustic song to be used as a theme song for his Squirtman projects, and today I threw it into Audacity along with some drum loops to see if I could come up with anything that didn’t sound horrible. 

I’m not sure I succeeded, but here it is.   

(Oh, and when I say “horrible” I am meaning because of whatever I’ve done to the song…   which, in its original state, is really quite good…  heheh)

Okay, all the car pix are uploaded and here’s what I’ve got, in no particular order.  Each of these links will open up a slideshow in a new window.

• Kia Soul
• Kia Forte
• Kia Rio
• Hyundai Veloster
• Hyundai Elantra
• Hyundai Sonata
• Ford Fiesta
• Ford Focus
• Mazda 3

Strangely enough, even after my visit to Ricart, and after looking at all those cars…  my opinions and thoughts haven’t changed much.      I still favor the Soul, but I like all of the other Kia models, and the Hyundai Elantra and Veloster are sharp looking as well.  Decisions, decisions.

I’ve never really had a good opinion towards Ford, and that will continue after I checked out the Fiesta and Focus.  Ricart had a billion of them, but they just seemed cramped and cheap (construction / quality-wise) compared to all of the other import cars.  They do have some funky colors available though.

I’m learning from the reaction of my friends that the Soul is definitely a “love it” or “hate it” type of vehicle.  I’ve been told that it is too boxy, that it looks like a toaster, etc…    and while the style may be something that folks can debate, the cargo space and the people space are unbelievable for a smaller car.

Quite a few of the other cars were nice, but I’m not even that tall and in a couple of them my head was actually touching the roof when I had my hat on.    Not in the Soul.  But like I said, I haven’t made a decision yet, but at least now I have a bunch of price stickers and photos to help me narrow it down even more. 

After pondering over it for a few weeks, today was the day that the gravel people came to dump stone in the driveway.  It was definitely the right choice, as those muddy ruts in the yard sure didn’t do anything to help the curb appeal. 

I was surprised when they arrived in a monster-sized dump truck.  Even bigger than the salt trucks that the city uses.    But from their arrival until they were done and gone, it couldn’t have been much more than a half hour.

Thankfully they didn’t just tip up the bed, let the gravel flow, and then drive down the driveway…  letting luck decide how the stone would fall.  When they were done dumping it from the truck, both of the guys got out and gave the whole thing the once-over with some metal rakes.

It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s way better than it was.  I actually just went out myself and raked it out a little bit more, trying to get the edges a little more evened up…  and it killed me.    My meds are good enough that they give me the false impression that I can do more than I really can do, so I think that’s about all the screwing around I’m gonna do with the stone for a while.

Next step:  Getting in the car and going back and forth in the driveway a few dozen times to get it all smooshed down as good as possible.    I’m sure it’ll require some tweaks over the next few weeks as I come and go, but I’m not gonna worry about that right now.

I spent most of the day in Columbus yesterday.  First at Ricart’s dealership in Canal Winchester, looking through all their new car inventory, and then later at one of the auctions that was nearby.

I took a buttload of pix at Ricart, basically doing recon on a handful of cars that I’ve got on my short list, and I should be uploading those to Flickr later today once I dump my camera.  Then at the auction I spent $40 bucks and came home with a back seat packed full of crap.    I call it “crap” but it is meant as a positive term, because I definitely got some nice goodies there last night.

Currently it is spread around my living room, as I sort it into piles of stuff to keep, stuff to donate away, and stuff that gets tossed.  Once I get through the stuff I’ll probably make another post bragging about what I ended up with. 

Oh, and a funny thing happened on my way to Ricart from Lancaster.  As I was driving on the highway, the engine in my car started acting up…  almost as if one of the cylinders would quit firing like it was supposed to.    It only did it a few times, but I couldn’t help but imagine that it was because only a few days earlier I had told my car that soon he would have a new brother, and I think it might have upset him a little bit.    (I know, I’m weird…  heh)

So yeah, I’ll have a bunch of pix up soon along with a better report from Ricart, and then I’ll be talking about my auction stuff in more detail, maybe with some new pictures as well.  So you can either look forward to that or not. 

While watching the news today I saw a commercial for a place called Columbus Clinical, which is apparently currently accepting patients for a COPD drug trial.  I forget what it said the terms are, other than having a medically documented history of COPD as well as being a smoker or ex-smoker.

Link:  Columbus Clinical Site

I’m gonna try to let a couple of my friends know about this, but I also wanted to post it here for the folks that I might not get to talk to as regularly anymore. 

Well hello there Mr. Corn Dog. 

I’m happy to see you too.