Corridor 9

EDITED: I decided to remove this video due to some crude images.

Hurt was origionally composed by Trent Reznor and is often hailed as one of his best and most introspective pieces of songwriting. However, it really took off when Johnny Cash covered it in 2002. In the video Cash featured images and pictures from his life up to the final few months.

While the lyrics are deep and abstract, the whole idea of looking at ourselves and seeing what we’ve done to hurt those around us is definitely an eye opening experience.

BTW: Additional information can be found at the Sadkermit.com site. There are quite a few other audio files there that are just hilarious to listen to.

WARNING! I do NOT recommend children watch this until parents view first.

Words can’t even begin to explain. View for yourself and form your own opinion.
An additional video can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nhrjkgK1ks

Over the past few days I’ve been busy tying to get my EMT certification in order before it expires and finalizing a number of BackpackGearTest reports. Unfortunately I’ve either had a report due or the responsibility to edit other reports every week for the past month.

However, yesterday I was able to get a bit of time to work on the boat. After cleaning out a number of leaves and throwing away more than a few items of trash I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Because the boat was rigged more as a fishing vessel, I’ve had to remove some of the depth finder wires running throughout the hull. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to remove the duck blind poles yet, but we’ll just have to see about that.

I was hoping to get it in the water tomorrow, but I’m not sure that is going to happen. I’ll keep you updated on the progress. It would be nice to take the family fishing while Abby is down though.

Well… that’s a lie really. So I’m using this to both vent, maybe get some words of encouragement and some advice.

Here’s the plot: I want a dog. My wife and kiddos want a dog. We both want different types. They want a smaller dog that they can play with, but not have jumping all over them. I want a larger breed that I can have jumping all over me to play with and train, backpack with, and maybe a bit for home protection.

Here’s the back story: We’ve not had good luck with dogs so far. Our family adopted a Lab puppy shortly before moving into our new house last November. Unfortunately, it developed Corona (Like Parvo, only not as severe) and we were faced with 2 choices: return it to the shelter where it would have a 75% chance of survival from constant care, or try to nurse it back ourselves where it would only have a 40% chance of survival. Naturally we chose to give it a better life and let it go back. We then adopted another adult lab but that only lasted about a week. I believe it was beaten or mistreated because it was afraid of everything. When I was going to throw a ball or Frisbee it hid behind the car. It was also afraid of the leash for a while too. I wasn’t the only one that got the impression its previous owner beat it with the leash; the vet was also noticing the same traits. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when it jumped up and “nipped” at my wife’s face when I was at the fire dept one night. Being as how I have two kids (6 and 10) this is simply not acceptable, even if it was playful as I believe.

The play: So, this brings me to a place where I said our next dogs would be puppies, from breeders so we know how they were treated, and that we would train them up the way we wanted them. Now, we know a breeder who has a batch of beagle pups that have been very well cared for. My wife and kiddo already have their hearts set on one. However, I still want a bigger dog. I always have liked bigger dogs, and while a beagle is nice to play with, I want a larger dog too. Problem is, I don’t really have $500 - $1500 to purchase a German Shepherd or Lab (my 2 favorites) from a breeder. I thought about rescuing one from a shelter again, but I’d want to get one that I knew wasn’t abused. The only chance of that happening is to get a puppy. So yes… I’m scared. I don’t want to go through getting another pup with corona, the last one was hard enough. I guess from now on I’ll always have a bit of an unsettling feeling about shelters simply based on past experiences.

Well… after all the hassle we had before; http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=881133

It appears that iTunes developers have addressed part of the problem with the multimedia keys in 7.1.1. Now the play/pause, stop, forward, and reverse buttons work well, even when iTunes is minimized to the systray.

However, the volume buttons are still hosed. Whenever iTunes isn’t the “top window”, or window in focus and I press mute it still mutes the system, then quickly unmutes it again. The same for pressing the up and down volume. When iTunes is in focus it will only increase the volume by 1 notch. When iTunes isn’t in focus it increases or decreases the volume by two notches.

What would really be nice is if there were a checkbox in the preferences section to completely disable iTunes multimedia key support.

Still a bad day for me, so I’m going back to 7.02 again.

UPDATE: I’ve solved this issue. Check this link to get more information: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=899624&tstart=0

While I do not officially support any candidate, I thought this was quite a good commercial. Those of you out there who may remember the 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh Commercial will definitely get a kick out of this one.

Where iTunes Went Wrong | MattFarina.com

Gee… no wonder iTunes stoped working with Christianrock.net. This is kindof like buying a car from Ford that only runs on Ford gas.

I’ve been using iTunes for the past few years with great success. I know there are some of you who absolutely hate Apple and all they stand for. Quite honestly, I don’t like their closed source way of thinking either, but I must admit they have products that work….. most of the time.

In the past I had to use a hack to get my multimedia keys to work with iTunes. After installing this small script in the plug-ins folder, I was able to control playback with the keys on the side of my laptop. Even when iTunes was minimized in my systray, the keys still worked.

Lately iTunes has been crapping out though. Apple rewrote part of iTunes code to allow it to natively use the multimedia keys without having to hack it with an additional plugin. However, now the problem is a “doubling up” in the commands. I’m not sure why, but apparently both iTunes and Windoze seem to be fighting for control. Now when I press mute, iTunes mutes the computer, then Windoze unmutes it. Its the same with the play/pause button and the volume buttons. This is quite annoying, but Apple has yet to step forward and even acknowledge the problem.

You can find out more information here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=881133

With all this hot weather lately, I have been thinking about opening the pool. Of course Kristie is telling me no, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I have no problem braving the cold… maybe a bit of a polar bear swim until it warms up?

Anyway, while I love the cold, I am looking to get outside without having to wear a coat. So what date do you think I should open the pool?

Brown Santa delivered another nice goody to my door last night; the Black Diamond Mesa tent. I had initially planned on taking this out to test last night, but Santa didn’t arrive till almost 5pm and I wouldn’t have had time to weigh and document prior to heading out into the woods. I must say, this tent is much bigger than I thought it was going to be. I’ve used a number of 2 person tents before, but this one is just huge! I’d be willing to bet that it’s big enough for Kristie, Kendall, and I all at the same time. Now all I’ve got to do is find someone with enough free time to head out and test!

Maybe next week I’ll get a bit of time to get out into the woods for a while. {wishing}

Well.. once again the thermostat on my jeep has gone out. It’s stuck open and I’m not getting any heat, so it’s time for me to switch brands. I’m not going with MotoRad anymore! While they claim that their thermostats are failsafe, it’s amazing how 2 different thermostats can fail within a week of putting them in. Seems to me they need to check their production line or something cause they sure aren’t saving me any money!

Ever wish you could harness the power of the internet; maybe to help you achieve a goal. No, I’m not talking about making money, there are too many websites out there already that are stealing from people with promises of getting rich quick. No, I’m talking more about a personal or spiritual goal.

I’ve tried to harness the power of the net to express my thoughts. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes it seems like nothing more than mindless babble. I guess my ultimate goal is to learn more about myself. While this is a wonderful goal in my own personal life, it doesn’t necessarily help others unless they are going through the same things that I have written about.

However, over at One Wight or Another, they are helping others through their blog and the power of the internet. It’s founder was tired of being “overweight” and decided that it was time to do something about it. Being as how she didn’t have time to go to a local support group, she started blogging and her page took off. Her second post, more or less an introduction into her life and why she started, shares a part of her life that most people keep secret. She lays it all out on the table; her past, her weight, her spirituality, and her plan for change. I think it’s this openness and desire to share her experience with others that has caused this site to grow. Today there are over 20 people who also post about their weight loss and other issues guiding their life.

As I posted below, I was interested in taking over the webmaster position for the Madisonville Fire Department. After speaking a bit with Chief Stewart today I learned that my understanding of the position was a bit off base. I had thought that the web page was an in house operation that he was primarily in charge of maintaining. He informed me today that while he did help post information, the city’s information technology consultants are actually in charge of the page, and that all information needs to be approved by the city prior to posting.

Because I thought that John was wanting to get rid of the position, now that he’s covered up by his duties as chief, I had approached him about obtaining the position. Now that I understand exactly how the web page works, I’m a bit hesitant about getting involved. Posting factual information about the department, city, and personnel is easy enough. Updating schedules and making sure that contact & training information is correct is also easy enough. However, once you start having to filter everything through a third party it becomes a bit hectic. Depending on how many people must approve the information, it could be like the whisper game; where Mary tells Jim something, Jim tells Jane, Jane tells George, etc. By the time it gets through 10 people the original statement is lost. After thinking about it over for a while, I think it’s best that this job stay with the city’s consultants.

My goal was to make it easier for the people of Madisonville, as well as the department members, to access information about their fire department. However, this is getting better than it has been, especially since there wasn’t even a MFD webpage a year ago. Things will continue to get better, and it will only take time.

Yesterday while I was browsing for blogs on hiking and backpacking I found an awesome new site dedicated to photos of people with their backpacks in places all around the world. This is such a simple concept and yet it’s quite ingenious. This guy takes pictures, a short blurb about the place, and a description of the pack and places them on his site. Nothing fancy, but oh what beautiful work.This is definitely going to be one of my favorite sites!

http://www.mytravelbackpack.com/

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a bit of housekeeping around here, so quite a few changes are coming in the next few weeks. First on my list of priorities is adding new categories. Fitting all my posts in the same old eleven categories is getting harder and harder, so I’m going to start adding new categories that fit the topics I’m posting.

In addition, I’m going to go back and fix some links in old posts. A good majority of these have to do with the upgrade from Gallery 1 to Gallery 2. The new format of Gallery has moved all the picture albums, which naturally broke all the links in my old posts.

Also, I’m going to try to network with a few other blog owners to get my site out there for the world to see. You can read about the first one tomorrow after the post goes live. It’s going to become one of my favorite blogs for sure simply because of the beautiful pictures that are posted there. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the post.

With all these fixes coming down the pike I’ll need all the eyes I can to make sure that the site runs like clockwork. If you see problems,please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Thanks!

While replacing the water pump on my jeep about a month ago, I figured it would be a good time to change out the thermostat while I had everything stripped down. unfortunately for me, I must have received a bad thermostat because it went out a few weeks ago. Luckily for me the thermostat I put in there was a failsafe type that sticks in the open position when it fails.

Needless to say, I’ll be spending the day Sunday replacing the thermostat I placed in there before. lets just hope the one I have now is good as I’m really not looking forward to this.

UPDATE: I’ve finished the install and everything seems to be working fine. Hopefully they’ll continue to work fine.

Well…. It’s about time for my bi-monthly rant on Gaming laptops. I’ve been researching the Dell XPS M1710 and the Alienware m9700. While I’d like to go with Alienware and their 1Gig of video ram, I’m reading a bunch of negative press regarding Alienware and the quality of their machines.

Fortunately for me I have plenty of time to research this more. The lowest price for the system I want currently is around $3500, and we all know I can’t get my wife to let me spend that just yet.

I’ve been in communication with Chief John Stewart regarding the official Madisonville Fire Department web page. Since accepting the Chief position, John hasn’t had an opportunity to keep updating the web page like he had in the past. I’ve been looking for a way to contribute to the MFD web page for a while now, and the webmaster position would give me just the opportunity to do that.

In addition to updating static information ranging from pictures & personal biographies, I’m looking to put a little dynamic edge into the web page also. Training schedules, callback (overtime) information, departmental advancements, HAZMAT news and the like would all be great additions to the site. In my opinion this information would go a long way toward providing the community a greater understanding of exactly what the Madisonville Fire Department does.

I’m hoping to have a meeting with Chief Stewart next week to discuss the page and possibly taking over the position.

Unfortunately, with the recent death in the family, my last backpacking trip was canceled. This wasn’t too much of a problem for me since the temperatures that weekend were really cold anyway and the gear that I was slated to test hadn’t even been shipped yet.

However, I just received notice that the Black Diamond Mesa tent was shipping out today and it should be here in a few days. As I’ve just finished up my GoLite DriMove Top report that is due next Tuesday, I’m thinking that an overnighter next week is just what the doctor ordered. Seeing as how Weather.com has the temperatures ranging from 45 - 65 next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday all I need now is to get permission from my wife.

(Yes I know… that will be the hardest part… but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Even if it is asking his wife for the Ok.)

Kendall underwent minor surgery today to remove the tubes that were in her ears for the past 2 years. Kristie and I , as well as her doctor, all felt that it was time to take them out. we could have waited a bit longer, but with them being in so long now and not falling out on their own, it was likely they wouldn’t have fallen out on their own anyway. Being as how summer is so close at hand, and how we purchased a house with a pool, we thought it would be nice if she didn’t have to worry about her ears this summer but simply be a kid and have fun.

Hopefully we’ll have no more problems with her ears.