Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Today is my father’s birthday. The girls and I went out to dinner with him and my mom tonight to celebrate to the Parkway Grill in Pasadena. The food was delicious and we had a great time. Happy Birthday Dad!
A few days ago I finished my latest book, Big Fish by Thomas Perry. It’s another crime novel more in the vein of Metzger’s Dog as oppposed to The Butcher’s Boy. I quite enjoyed the tale of a smuggler’s life and the involvement of some ‘hollywood types’ into it. It was a fast read, and I’m glad I got it from the library instead of buying it.
The last few days have been busy with family in town and work. The upcoming weekend will be busy as well. Perhaps I should go to bed early to get some rest.
Some of you may not be interested in my going to sleep, so here are a few links for your enjoyment:
Postal Experiments
International Federation of Competitive Eating
Strongbad draws a dragon
What if Fox bought Disney

I can eat a twinkie in 12.85 seconds. That beats the local record of 13 seconds.
Chris and Dave were telling me that they had a speed Twinkie eating conference over the weekend and that Chris had won with a time of 13 seconds. Brad was nearby and stated that he could beat that. Someone tossed him a twinkie and the stopwatch came out. I decided to make an attempt too.

Brad attempted to shove the entire Twinkie into his mouth and swallow. I went with the 3 bites with seperate swallow method.

Here I am winning the contest while Brad is still masticating. Note my Survivor style form with tounge display and raised arms.
12.85 seconds, I dare you to beat it.

Purely hypothetical question here…
Imagine that your wife had an unnatural love of stapleguns and loved to use them to attach everything from christmas lights to party ribbons. Now imagine that she wanted to use the staplegun to attach a sheet over a window. That would mean stapling directly into plaster.
Is it so wrong to question the use of a staple gun inside a house on the walls?

I moved the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary fermenter. I measured the specific gravity and the rough calculation is 4% beer. Not bad. A few more days to eek out the last bit of fermentation and I’ll bottle it.
Tivo News:
Tivo announced several new options today at CES. They are all great. I don’t knwo which one to get…
You can get a Tivo with a DVD player built-in.
You can get a Tivo with broadand access that you can access from the internet and move clips to other Tivos in your house.
You can get a Tivo that records and plays HDTV.
Health Update:
Will all you stop worrying about me? Sheesh it’s not like I’m gunna keel over.

All the sudden, a few days after my vacation finishes up and I go back to work, my body is revolting against me. I’ve got a cold, my right eye feels like someone is stabbing an icepick into it, and my right elbow hurts from spending too much time at the computer at work.
I’ve been trying to eat well, get some sleep, and stay off the computer at home, all to no avail. I feel like going home taking two vicodin, drinking a beer and sleeping for two days.
In other news, MartinMartin has got his weblog groove on.
Some have asked (ok, one person asked) how the blogrolling thing was working. For a limited time, you can take a look at my blog test page. As the weblogs get updated, they pop to the top of the list and get a (new) flag next to them. Weblogs that don’t get updated drop to the bottom of the list…
Make sense? OK, gotta go back to work.

A while ago my old webhost Binaryblocks went out of business. I wrote about it here.
It appears that the former owner of Binaryblocks has got back into the web hosting business. Thanks to Pengo, a poster on my site, binaryblockssucks.com, I took a look at aractelnetworks.com. That’s the exact same site as the old binaryblocks site. Jason changed a few names and left everything else the same.
When Jason Piercy let binaryblocks disintegrate, it cost me money that I had paid for hosting and it cost me money to get my data off the servers he was reselling. PERSONALLY, I WOULD NOT BUSINESS WITH JASON PIERCY, ARACTELNETWORKS, OR BINARYBLOCKS AGAIN. You should make your own decision about whether they are reputable companies.
I would suggest to all of those harmed by the binaryblocks collapse to post something about the link between binaryblocks and aractelnetworks so that when people do web searches, they find this information out.
binaryblocks.com = aractelnetworks.com
Update: If you find this post, you might want to read this update.

Thanks to my brother Matt and his skill with photoshop, the pictures below of the kids in the snow look much better.
I noticed all the comments about the football game. I’m not a huge football fan, but I must comment on one thing. A few weeks ago, I saw the clips of Terrell Owens pulling the pen from his sock and signing the football after scoring a touchdown. This was met with shock and dismay from many.
Here’s the truth. It was funny. It was hilarious. It was knee slappingingly funny.
I wish there was more stuff like this in the NFL. The XFL guys had the right idea.

When a scientist finally invents a replicator, a device to make an exact copy of a item, that scientist will be a parent.
They will not invent it to get rich or save humanity. They will invent it to make sure that each child has exactly the same thing. No more arguing over who gets to play with the new toy. *bzzzt* Ta-da, two copies of the toy.
This morning I had to deal with much yelling and gnashing of teeth over the new copy of a Hello Kitty video game. If only I had a replicator….

Zoe turns 7 today. Amazing. I know it’s cliche, but it only seems like yesterday Michele was waddling around pregnant getting diapers and a crib ready.
I had a meeting at work I couldn’t get out of today so I missed out on the fun. Michele took the girls up to the mountains so they could play in the snow. Zoe took a skiing course.
Here are a few pictures:

Zoe on skis

Zoe on the lift

Mira sliding down the hill

The New York Giants got screwed in yesterday’s playoff game.