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Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
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7:52 am - So, I'm in Vermont.
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So, I'm in a hotel in Montpelier Vermont doing the "watch an hour of the weather channel before I start my plans for the day" thing. I'm heading to Sugarbush Mountain in a few for a day of skiing. I haven't been here since 1998. Dear Lord it's a long drive to get here though. You know it's a long drive when you see the Econo Lodge sign down the road and you hear Angels sing because it means you can finally get out of the car. I mean seriously, I kept driving and putting miles behind me, and my GPS said I was making progress. But I swear that the last hour and a half of this drive took over four hours to complete.
Also, Vermont highways are ok, but Vermont local roads suck. I followed a Jeep for about twenty miles at one point and the only indication that there were bumps in the road ahead of me where when the Jeep's headlights pointed at the sky. In New York we may not be great at fixing the roads, but at least we mark the bumps.
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| Sunday, November 13th, 2011
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4:54 am - Halloween 2011!
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4:48 am - Halloween 2010
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Sadly, this unfinished post is what has been keeping me from updating my journal for the past year. Now that I'm getting it out of the way, I can move on to new things after this!
So... the pumpkins that I carved for Halloween 2010. 
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| Thursday, September 16th, 2010
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5:01 am - Primary
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I've been meaning to post about my CP2010a trip (which is largely why I haven't posted anything else lately) since May, and yet I've gone through a CP2010b trip and am planning a CP2010c trip this year too. I'll still have to post a quick rundown of some of the year's highlights at some point. There were a lot of firsts this year that are worth at least a quick mention.
But for this post, I just wanted to say something about the Primary election on Tuesday. For the first time ever, I went to vote in the primary election. I vote in the general election, but never the primary. Same for my parents, actually. But I wanted to go this year because this is the first year that New York was forced to switch over from the old lever voting machines. Given all the problems with the new system before it even replaced the new voting machines, I wanted to try them on a low-volume day.
So we get to the polling place, and my first thought is what a waste of paper the new system is. The new voting machines take an 8"x14" sheet of fairly heavy paper. The ballots are all pre-printed too. When I showed up, they had a stack of ballots there for the democratic vote, and another for the republican vote, both of which were approximately an inch thick. I showed up at 7:30 at night and I was voter #18. I'm not sure how many ballots were in a stack (I'm guessing around 500) but nearly all of them are going to be thrown away. Even if they could be printed on the spot, there was only one line on them anyway, so you're still wasting a large portion of the paper. And you figure that you have to print a stack of ballots for every polling district out there. (and actually two stacks for the primaries. One republican, one democratic.) So we're going to be using a buttload of trees for no reason at all. The old machines only used paper for write-in votes.
Second impression of the new voting process is that this is going to be terrible once everything is in full swing. Once you've got some blue-hairs who have been voting with the lever machines for the past 60 years try the new system for the first time, it'll probably slow things down a lot. You have to bubble-in all the spots on the ballot for who you are voting for. And they told us that the scanners can be picky, so be careful when filling them in. We didn't have a problem with any of our votes, but I can imagine someone in a rush to vote (or with unsteady hands) messing up a bubble and needing a new ballot. With the lever machines you just flicked a lever to decide who you wanted to vote for. If you changed your mind, you flipped it back and selected a new lever. Now you need a new ballot because there is no way (that I saw) to erase your mistake. Plus the bubble-in process is just slower than flicking a lever anyway. Also, the lever machines are set up so that you can only vote certain ways. Like casting one vote for president locks out all other levers so that you can't change your vote without resetting your first lever. With the bubble forms it is possible to vote for every candidate in a position all at once. (or more likely, it would simply allow for an honest mistake in accidentally filling in the wrong bubble.) So it just seems like a poorly designed system.
We didn't actually have any problems during the process, but it still took like 3-4 times longer than normal. (those old lever machines were QUICK) So I feel bad for the other people who had to deal with much larger problems with the new systems.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/14/new-yorkers-head-to-the-polls-on-primary-day/
The sad fact is that I've been reading about a lot of problems with the new machines for years now. Apparently the company that makes them isn't concerned with getting them to work right. I'm not expecting a 100% success rate for the first year of a major rollout (though actually the machines showed up in previous years for accessibility reasons, but you didn't have to use them), but the amount of problems they seem to have is ridiculous. The lever machines may be old and big and bulky, but they JustWorked (TM).
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| Sunday, May 9th, 2010
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6:25 am - This is why I dislike spring.
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There hasn't been much going on lately so there isn't much to comment on. The weather has been all over the map lately. Back in early April, we had two days that were as hot as if they belonged in the middle of the summer. I sun burned my legs while skiing on those days.
Then the weather cooled back off, and we had everything from freezing cold to average temperatures. Initially we only got snow from December to February, making it like the shortest or second shortest snowfall season ever, or something like that. Then we got trace amounts of snow in late April, turning it from the shortest season, to an average length season. Eventually the temperatures kinda stabilized in the 60's, with a few more days in the 70's and 80's.
Then there's last night. A massive wind storm came through and the temperatures crashed, bottoming out at just about 30 degrees. Last night we got more snow. It didn't stick to the roads or grass, but there's around a quarter-inch on the cars. It's funny, I remember winters in years past being longer and more intense, but I never remember seeing snow in May. It's been an interesting start to the year, that's for sure.
The 8th was opening day to Darien Lake, and I wanted to go pretty badly. I've had a good streak of making it to opening day for a number of years now, but it wasn't to be. Between the 50+mph wind gusts, and the spattering of rain, I didn't think that it would be worth the trip. (not to mention, a lot of the rides would probably be closed.) If I lived closer I'd have gone to get my season pass processed if nothing else. Hopefully today will be better, though the expected high is 45 degrees. Now granted, it's not the first time I've had to wear long underwear to an amusement park, but all the other times have been in October/November. I guess we'll just have to see what the day brings.
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| Sunday, April 4th, 2010
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12:47 pm - These bittersweet days of spring.
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This past season has turned out to be my best year yet for skiing, yet probably the worst year for snow.
It's odd, we've only had three months of snow this year. There was no snow in November, and we only had trace (not measurable) amounts of snow in March. I guess it doesn't officially count as snow if it's so light you can't measure it. And we've been at zero snow for April. Not that we get a lot this time of year, but I think the average snowfall for this month is about five inches or so. So this year has been a disappointment snowfall wise. And yet, people still complain about it. I wish I could buy everyone who hates winter a plane ticket and send them to Florida. Might as well get it over with now. Personally, I wish we could just have winters like I remember in my youth. Even when we didn't get excessive amounts of snow, the average seemed to be at least double what we get now.
Anyway, moving on. Friday and Saturday turned out to be the last two days of the ski season for me. They are open today as well, but given how good the last two days went I think I'll just go out with memories of those days instead of trying to crowbar a final trip in on Easter Sunday. Friday and Saturday were both amazing days. It's like, I'm sad the snow is melting but yet I wouldn't trade it for the weather we had in exchange. On Friday the weather was full sun, with a (record) high of 84 degrees at the mountain. Saturday was nearly the same with a high reaching about 81. In the over 2 decades of skiing I've been doing, those have been the only two days where I've gone skiing in shorts and a T-shirt. And even then I was starting to get hot by the end of the day! It's sad to see the snow go, but I wouldn't trade those past two days for anything.
On Friday I went outside in sweat pants and a T-shirt to check the temperature outside, and it wasn't bad out. Warm in the sun, somewhat cool in the shade. I went back into the house to put some things together before I left. I was in the house all of about 10 minutes, and when I went back outside it felt like someone jacked the temperature up like 10 degrees! I was already starting to sweat even in the shade. So I switched to shorts and headed to the mountain. Well, I had put on sunscreen on the upper part of my body, but initially thinking I wasn't going to wear shorts, I didn't put any on my legs. Then I made that last minute decision and headed to the mountain. I wound up having my legs get burnt from the intensity of the sun. I've had very mild sunburns before while skiing, but never to that extent. Oops.
The snow was skiable, but I'm amazed as to how much it changed between the two days. On Friday nearly all the trails were open, with most areas in good shape. On Saturday, trails that had been perfectly skiable on Friday had huge gaping bare spots in them. Some of the trails involved skiing over grass so that you could get to the next patch of snow. Still, it was fun and I had a great time.
This year involved 43 trips to Bristol Mountain, 1 trip to Song Mountain ($6 lift ticket!), 1 trip to Gore Mountain (with a free lift ticket, woo-hoo!), 1 trip to Holiday Valley (haven't been there since 1998), and two trips to McCauley mountain. All in all, I'd say it was a good year. Most trips ever.
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| Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
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6:36 am - What part of 10'10" don't you understand?
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Last Sunday the bridge at the end of the street, claimed another truck. Yet this time there was something different about it. I actually saw it happen... kinda.
That afternoon a truck came rolling down our street, and it just looked out of place. There are a few legitimate trucks that are allowed on our street because there are a few businesses down at the other end of the street. But this truck didn't have any markings on the sign that indicated that he was a local. I also saw that he had an out of state license plate, though I couldn't tell where it was from at the time. So I walked to the end of our driveway, and watched it roll down the street. And it kept going, and going, and going.... and then, *crunchcrunchscrapescrape*. Sure enough, it nailed the bridge. It must have been pretty loud up close since we could still hear it around a third of a mile away. The funny thing is that neighbors across the street was out and they saw it too. They clapped when it hit. Given that my mom and I witnessed it, we called 911 for it. I grabbed my camera and started walking up the street.
Nothing much new to add. The truck was a reefer, so there was insulation everywhere from where it split the top of the trailer open. The license plate (and similar ID marking on the side of the truck) said that he was from Texas. That must suck. Getting all the way from Texas to New York and then splitting your trailer open on the bridge. Also, he damaged the refrigeration unit during the crash, so the whole time we were there we heard a hissing noise from the refrigerant leaking into the atmosphere.
And just a days ago it almost happened again. A trailer with I think four boats on it with their bows all pointed high into the air, went down the street. I went to the end of the street to look, and when I was out there, I saw two mechanics from the garage up the street run out to the road to watch too. This driver was smart though. He pulled over to the side of the road and checked things before he just went bounding through the bridge. Eventually he turned around in the lot up the street and came back. I admire that he was smart enough to do that, though it would have been entertaining to see a bunch of boats all beat up and spewed all over the road.
  
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| Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
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8:22 pm - Doggie Dreams
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The last week we were watching over Sadie and Thunder for a couple of days. Sadie's a female Pit Bull that is about three years old now I think. Thunder is a male Pit Bull mix that is about a year and a half, I'm guessing.
I was laying in bed and Sadie was laying next to me, and she went to sleep. And I was looking at her as she slept and I could see that she started dreaming. She had the eye movements and paw twitches and all that. And I've seen other dogs do that before, it's not anything new. But the interesting thing about watching Sadie was the other things she did. Sadie will sometimes start vocalizing when she wants something. I'm not sure how you'd explain it, but it's halfway between a bark and a whine. For the first time when she was sleeping, I heard her make that noise. It was very short, but still. Normally she just snores when she sleeps.
And then I saw her do something I've never seen a dog do in their sleep, and that was she started chewing. I mean I couldn't really see opening her mouth, but she was unmistakably clenching and releasing her teeth. I could hear that clearly. So I'm just left wondering what she caught and ate. It was neat to watch though. I wish I could see what kind of things canines dream about.
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| Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
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12:17 pm - Oh subwoofer, how I have missed thee...
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I've been plugging away on my latest desktop for the better part of a year now, though I haven't had a good set of speakers in all that time. My last desktop had a decent 2.1 set, but for some reason it stopped working. I mean the subwoofer still worked, but the satellite speakers stopped working and I was unable to get them working again no matter what I tried. So I've been surviving on headphones for over the past year, both between this system and my laptop. Now granted, they are a very high quality set of headphones that have excellent sound, but I forget just what I'm missing by not having a good set of speakers. Plus, even though my headphones have like 13 feet of cord, it's still too hard to listen to music away from the computer.
So I've been digging around on the internet for a good 2.1 replacement system. A friend of mine pointed out something on the slickdeals front page that HP had a Logitech X-540 5.1 speaker set up for only $10 more than I was looking to spend. So I jumped on it. I was originally going to set it up as a 3.1 setup and not worry about the rear speakers, but I plugged them in anyway as I was testing it out to see how they sounded. The first game I tried with it was TF2. Holy cow, as good as my headphones were, I was amazed the first time I walked out of respawn. I heard the door slide open in front of me, and it closed shut behind me. That was really cool.
So then I loaded up Winamp, and decided to test out the strength of these speakers. I was looking at reviews before I got them, and some reviews said that you can't turn them up extremely loud. But when I tested them, I found out that you can pretty much get them up into hearing-damage range without distortion. And having the subwoofer makes the sound so much more incredibly rich that I am amazed by what I was missing by not having one.
I have no other place at the moment to put the sub other than at my feet under my desk. When I crank the music I can feel it breathing on my ankles. :-) I think I made a good choice with this system.
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| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
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7:00 am - Nice Rack!
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The Thursday before last my ski rack that I ordered from Rack Attack arrived at our doorstep. I'll get to that in a minute, though. First I want to pimp Rack Attack.
Ok, I've wanted a ski rack for a while now. Like... seven years at least. I wanted to get one for my Celebrity, but I always figured that I wouldn't have that car for more than like 2-3 years tops, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a ski rack that might not fit my next car. Now I know they are largely interchangeable. Anyway, this time around, I decided to not make that mistake again and I started shopping around for a new rack. I came across this site called Rack Attack. I spent a lot of time looking around on their site and I actually found it to be the most helpful of all the sites I've come across. Basically you don't even need to know what kind of rack you want when you get there, you just need to know that you need a rack. So when I finally decided to go with a rack, I went with them.
Rack Attack wasn't the cheapest place around, but they weren't far off. But they do have a price match guarantee. If you find the same parts elsewhere for cheaper (in-stock, with shipping costs included), they'll match the price on it. So I dug around online and found two different places that sold the parts that I wanted for cheaper than Rack Attack, and I took a shot at getting the price match. I submitted the form shortly after 2am or so, and I heard back from RA later in the day saying that they would honor the price match. I was shocked! It's never that easy! They didn't squabble over anything. That alone knocked $30 off of the stuff I wanted to buy.
So then I had a question about the ordering process. I didn't see where you were supposed to submit the information for getting a price match. I wanted to know if placing an order placed the order instantly, or if a human reviews the order before it's completely processed. They responded in about... oh, 15 minutes saying that they review it first and that's when they do the price match. Again I was surprised by their response. I've dealt with companies that will get back to you within half a day or so, but the 15 or so minutes turnaround time is amazingly quick. So I placed the order with them and got a confirmation email from them. Just 7 (!!) minutes after I placed my order with them, I got a second email adjusted for the price match information, and thus the order was finalized.
Now RA says that 90% of their orders ship same day, but I wasn't too concerned about it because if it takes an extra day to ship, that's not a big deal. About two hours after I placed my order, I get a phone call from RA saying that they were out of stock of the Fit Kit that I needed for my car. (the bars and feet are all standard, the fit kit fits it to your specific vehicle) So they called their Thule rep and were having the kit overnighted to them, and they'd ship it to me once they got it. Like I said, it didn't bother me that it took an extra day to ship, but that was nice of them to call me and let me know about it. On the phone they told me that it would most likely be Friday to Monday when I got the rack from UPS. It arrived on Thursday.
So I get the kit and start to put it together, when I notice that all the parts are there except for two lock cores. I got the lock cores for the main part of the rack, but not the part that holds the skis. Basically I can lock the rack to my roof, but I can't lock my skis in the rack. Not a big deal though given that I don't need to lock my skis in the rack yet anyway. But their website did say that it was supposed to come with lock cores, so I emailed them about it. And keep in mind that this is the first time I've ever had missing parts in an order and not been worried that I would get them. Anyway, true to form, about 15 or so minutes after I emailed RA, I got two emails back. One email apologized for the inconvenience, and said that they would correct the issue (within approximately 3-7 days after delivery). The other was an email to their Thule rep that was CC'ed to me telling them what the problem was, and asking them to correct it. Today I got an email from UPS with a tracking number in it.
But it's been amazing just how good this company has been to me. They respond to emails immediately. They call right away if there's a problem. They didn't jerk me around on the price match, or trying to correct the problem of missing lock cores. Why can't all companies be this good?!?
Anyway, I threw that in there because it's rare to see a company treat their customers that good in this day and age, I'm sorry to say. So I wanted to recommend them for good service. I know that most people who read this don't ski, but the racks are quite configurable. You aren't limited to skis or snowboards, but you can also do canoes, kayaks, bikes, and various cargo boxes. Plus they also have trailer hitches, and hitch racks and whatnot. So it's useful for more than just skis. I was very pleased with their service so far, and I'd do business with them again if the opportunity arises.
So aside from that, my new ski rack is awesome. I can't wait to use it! I mean I've done a dry test run with it, but I can't wait to use it for real. Just a little over two weeks left, should the weather hold out.... I feel bad about waiting so long to buy one because it makes things so much more simple. Just throw the skis up top and go. Even the wind mode is minimal, too. I was worried I might need a fairing for it, but it turns out that I can barely hear it, so that's like $70 that I don't need to spend. I think it looks sharp, too. I got the all-black version of the rack which was actually cheaper than the black/silver version of the same thing. Now all I need is for winter to show up. I took a crappy picture from an artsy-fartsy angle to show off the roof rack and the snow tires. It doesn't help that it was like 70 degrees out today, but that should change soon if all goes well.
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12:28 am - Videotopia
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This update should have happened back in September, but I'm lazy and it didn't. Anyway...
I had heard that Strong National Museum of Play has an exhibit for a period of time called Videotopia. Videotopia is apparently a collection of old arcade games (going back to Pong!) that tour the country so that people can see and play them again. Plus, along with the games there was also some posters around the room that told the history of various video games that were there. Outside of the game room there was also a small exhibit of basically all the consoles ever sold in America. Including entries like the Virtual Boy. And they had a Pole Position cabinet there with clear plastic sides so that you could see what was in the cabinet and how all the controls worked. Even if I knew the basics, that was pretty cool to see.
Sadly, I am addicted to arcade games. Arcades are a dying breed though, with only a few still seeming to exist. I have this habit that I picked up over a decade ago where I separate all the change that I keep in my pockets. All quarters go in my right pocket, and the rest goes in my left. That way with just a jingle of my pocket I can assess my quarter status, and I can grab a quarter at a moment's notice. I never used to have more than $2-3 worth of quarters in my pockets though because every mall had an arcade. (heck, go back into the 80's and a lot of grocery/department stores even had them!) Even in more recent years, our Super Wal-mart had a small game room. Though that has since been replaced with a generic bank branch (seriously? why?!) With the decline of arcades though, I haven't dropped the habit of keeping my change separated. Because of this, my pocket tends to collect large numbers of quarters. Before visiting Videotopia, I had over $5 in my pocket in quarters, and another $5 at home in quarters that I had removed. Because seriously, $10 in quarters is a lot of lose change to keep in your pockets.
But then I saw Videotopia mentioned and I just had to go there! So I loaded up all the change in my pockets and headed out! The Strong Museum is easier than I thought to find. Basically I pretend like I'm heading to an Amerks game and take a right instead of a left. Anyway, I checked in and went into the exhibit. Holy cow... the place was loaded with old arcade machines. Some of them I haven't seen in years, some I haven't seen at all! I won't list most of them here because this webpage has a lot of them. And even that isn't a complete list.
I was surprised to see an old Sega Time Traveler machine, that I haven't seen in almost 20 years. I remember playing them, as they used live action video, which is rare to see in a machine. Though I don't think they were ever all that popular. I think that one of my favorite games there was this game... and I forget the name of it, but it was like the old game Stunts. Remember Stunts? Anyway, it was version of that. There were only four cars to choose from, but it was a sit-down game complete with wrap-around monitors for about 170 degrees of visibility, and a force-feedback steering wheel. Man that game was awesome... I mean it was Stunts, but you could actually drive it! Plus, the thing that surprised me is that the game had a realistic clutch with it. If you tried to shift gears without using the clutch it would just grind them and you'd be stuck in neutral. I thought the game was broken at first until I realized that it actually had a clutch pedal, as most racing games don't. But man that was good fun, slammin' gears and driving around the tracks, even if you could count the number of polygons used in the graphics with your fingers. :-) I wish I had a machine like that at home.
I think that the coolest thing at the exhibit though was just the variety of people there. It wasn't just geeky nerds there. I saw one gentleman in a full-on business suit and tie playing some games, and really enjoying himself! And there were some girls there in the exhibit too, of a wide variety of ages. It's sad to see people that interested in arcades, and yet they can't make a go of it. Ah well....
I had just a bit over $10 in quarters on me when I arrived. I blew through about $9 worth of that in the approximately two hours that I was there. It was just awesome. Oh, adding to the awesomeness was one of the girls sitting just out in front of the exhibit. She was passing out tokens to people who arrived to the exhibit ($1/person) But she had them all arranged so that the little stacks of tokens made the shape of PacMan chasing a ghost. I should have asked her if I could have taken a picture of it.
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| Friday, October 16th, 2009
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12:46 pm - Four letter word, beginning with "S."
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Booyah! It snowed last night! It was too warm for it to stick to anything, but it definitely was snowing. This is a bit early in the year for snow, I think. Usually it's not until the end of October that you see it. So, I hope that's a good sign of things to come!
I'd better get on the ball and get my ski rack and some new snow tires ordered.
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| Sunday, September 20th, 2009
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3:20 pm - The Great Escape
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It seems odd that I'd be able to use my Six Flags LJ icon again, but it's relevant once more. Yesterday I went with AJ to Six Flags: The Great Escape, in Lake George (Technically: Queensbury, NY). It was my first time there, though AJ has been quite a number of times before. The Great Escape (henceforth known as TGE) is somewhat odd for a Six Flags park, in that TGE doesn't really look like a Six Flags park. This is somewhat hard to explain to someone who hasn't been to a Six Flags park, but normally they are plastered with SF logos all over the place. I mean at Darien Lake you can still see where the old SF logos have faded permanently into the various garbage cans around the park. At TGE though, their trash cans just had a sign saying to have a heart and keep the park clean. Their uniform shirts had the same saying on the back and a TGE logo on the front. There are Six Flags references in the park, but they aren't as blatant as they are in other parks that I've been to. It surprises me that Six Flags held onto that park with how low-key it is.
There is one thing that is common to modern Six Flags parks though, and that is the advertisements/sponsors that run throughout the park. This is Six Flags: The Great Escape, sponsored by: Coco-Cola, Papa John's, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Skittles, Starburst, Snickers, M&M's, Aquarius Spring, Tyson, Cold Stone, Panda Express, Kodak, Heinz, dippin' dots, Glaceau Vitamin Water, and Ben & Jerry's. And I'm not kidding when I say that, I copied all the names directly out of my park map just now. :-) (that vitamin water was $4/bottle. Ow!)
I'm not sure I'll go through all the painful details of the trip like with CP200X, but there are some things that I'd like to mention.
The Comet is my favorite at the park, and it was by far the ride of the day. They were running both trains on the ride, so it was a constant walk-on. We never had to wait for anything longer than the train in front of us to load and leave the station. The Comet is a cool ride, in that it's a traditional wooden coaster... except that it's steel. Whereas the Gemini at Cedar Point is tubular steel track on a wooden structure, The Comet is the other way around. It has a traditional wooden track structure of several horizontal planks with flat steel on top, but a steel support structure. It totally fools you though because when you look at the coaster, you'd swear it was just a wooden coaster, painted white. Check out the photos on the SF website, if you just look quickly, you wouldn't know it's steel. Anyway, it's an awesome ride, with the good 'ol herky-jerkiness of a wooden coaster. We rode it a lot. And at the end of the day, we rode it back to back to back (and I'm not kidding when I say this) for at least 45 minutes straight. I was running out of ideas for poses for the on-ride photos. I really should have brought my chess set.
The bumper cars were also unique. The area above the bumper cars wasn't a roof of steel plates like you see at most bumper car arenas. It was actually a mesh of something that looked like chicken wire, that was stretched across the venue. But the funny thing is that it was actually possible to go off the grid and lose power. (mostly near the edge of the track, but they did warn you about that before you rode) Also, this version of the bumper cars had the STUPIDEST DRIVERS EVER. Holy cow! I have never seen people riding bumper cars before that just didn't get how to ride. You'd see a traffic jam happen, and people wouldn't know that you'd need to turn the steering wheel to clear it. Or if they turned the wheel in one direction, and they didn't get free, they'd keep the wheel turned in the same direction, and just sit there, not knowing what to do. Even with the ride operator telling them (over very clear speakers) to turn the wheel the other way. I've literately never seen anything like it before. Now I've seen traffic jams happen, they aren't a big deal. But it's pretty bad when people actually applaud when they free a jam or they comment about how smoothly a particular group is keeping traffic free-flowing. It was surreal though... I wish I had something to video everyone, they were just sad to watch. Even the "adults" couldn't figure out how to drive the cars.
The Flying Trapeze was another interesting ride. It was just a simple swing ride, but it runs forever. (or more like 5 minutes. It feels like forever.) the first time we were on it, the ride op forgot to raise it up before spinning up to speed. It involved several trips around with our feet dragging on the ground. When we went back at the end of the day, the op was more interesting. Since he had a captive audience, he started up a game of Simon Says. Losers get ejected from the ride. (ok, not quite)
I wanted to ride the Nightmare, but it was closed for the season. I only was on it once back when it was at Darien Lake, so I wouldn't mind seeing it again. Maybe some other year.
There is something that AJ says that's new to that park, and I've never seen elsewhere. Before they launched the ride, you'd hear the ride operator say "Take five" and then the ops would scan the platform, swing their hands in an arc in front of them, and end it with a thumbs up and an "all clear." It was kinda funny to watch the operators do it though. Some of them wouldn't even pay attention while they were doing it. It kinda makes sense for the roller coasters, because the platforms are longer and having multiple people scan the area seems like a good idea. But the rides operated by a single person seem like it's redundant to do it because since they can launch the ride themselves, scanning and giving an audible "take five" and "all clear" (complete with the thumbs up at the end) to themselves just seems silly.
We saw a Mr. Six dance show there. They had a guy come out of the crowd dress along with Mr. Six. It was fun to watch, even if somewhat silly. Later on that day, we saw someone in the park named Richard, who actually looked like Mr. Six! Except he was was on the park cleaning crew. Maybe that's his job when he's not performing?
Also, about the time we saw Mr. Six, we decided to get some food. AJ wanted a waffle cake, because we were smelling it and it did smell good. The only thing though is that TGE sells a plan waffle cake for $6, but they sell a waffle cone sundae for $7. It seems awful expensive, but we ordered one anyway. This thing was incredible. The waffle cake part of the deal was on the bottom, and it was as large as the plate that it was on. On top of that was a whole bunch of strawberries. They covered almost the whole cake. It was... kinda like a pizza in that the strawberries covered it except for the edge of the waffle cake. Then on top of that was like a pound of ice cream. And there was a ring of whipped cream around the edge of the whole setup in all the places that the ice cream didn't cover. If there wasn't a full-day's worth of calories in that sundae, I'd be absolutely shocked. It turned out to be essentially the largest strawberry shortcake I've ever had.
So that's about it. The park itself is nice. There is music playing all throughout it. Some of the pathways are kinda tight when the park is busy, but thankfully it wasn't busy at all yesterday. So lines were short, it's easy to get around, and the weather was perfect. (70's and full sun) You really couldn't have had it much better than that.
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| Sunday, September 13th, 2009
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4:28 am - Children these days...
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An interesting thing happened to me today. My dad and I were outside working on my mom's bike, when all of a sudden my dad points out a squirrel in the yard. I look over and sure enough, there's this young squirrel sitting in the yard about 15 feet off from us. We could tell it was a youngin' because even though there isn't a large variation in the sizes of squirrels, this guy was about 2/3rds of the length of a typical squirrel. He was just a cute little thing.
It surprised me that he was there, considering that we weren't being still or quiet. We're were talking a bit when we noticed him, and the little guy started coming towards me. I'm watching him and I thought he was going to come and sit on my foot, looking for food he was getting so close. (we do have some squirrels that will look into the back windows of our house because we'll throw out animal crackers for them) He wound up coming within six inches of my foot, and went right underneath my chair. He then went up to the back of our house, looked at it, then wandered over to the fence. He was looking at the fence as if it was too tall for him to climb, and he moved on out to our back yard and beyond. He just acted like he was young and inexperienced.
I was just surprised that he was that bold. I'm guessing that his squirrel parents never taught him/her about stranger danger. Still, it was a very neat experience, and the only thing that could have made it better was having a camera handy.
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| Sunday, September 6th, 2009
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5:42 pm - Rollin' Along
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Man, I've been putting a lot of miles on my car since I got it. I don't have the original mileage that was on the car when I got it, but I do have the mileage at my first fill-up. That first odometer reading was 97,246. In a month and about a week now, that went up to 99,518. That's 2,272 miles. That's way up from what I'm used to, even though I had a trip to the Adirondacks in there. (565 miles)
So I went through my gas receipts and ran some numbers and came up with the following MPG's since I've owned the car. (except for one, that I can't find the receipt for)
23.9, 22.8, 24.6, 27.2, 26.3, 25.6
for a grand total of 25.0 MPG. Which I don't think is too bad, considering that I'm not trying to drive to conserve gas, and I had the A/C running for a good chunk of that. Interesting that it went up a little in later ones, I wonder if it's for the new filters and PCV valve and whatnot? Still, it's not too bad.
One thing I found out is that when my gas gauge is reading completely empty, I still have like 3 gallons left in the tank. Normally I don't run the car that low, but these past three weeks I've been winding up with using what looks like a full tank of gas. When I go to refuel though, the car has been only taking like 12-13 gallons out of a tank that holds nearly 18. But I suppose that it's good to have a 50-mile reserve capacity when my gauge reads empty, instead of running out with 1/8th of a tank left on the gauge.
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| Saturday, September 5th, 2009
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2:55 pm - State Fair '09
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Yesterday was the yearly trip to the state fair in Syracuse. It was good, though I think that there was less free stuff than normal. Going towards the end of the fair instead of the beginning makes a big difference with that I think. And I hate to say it, but I think the center of progress building was better when Verizon was sponsoring it, instead of Americraft. It just seems tackier than before. I mean there weren't ShamWow pichmen there, but they did have Cham Wow pitchmen! Go figure.
Most of the trip was pretty routine though. There were more people there than I remember in years past, though I suppose that's better than not having enough. I think that out of everything there, the bunnies were the neatest. They had some that were basically all fur. You weren't supposed to reach into the cages because there were signs that they may bite, but there was one leaning up against the edge of the cage so that you could feel its fur. They had the softest fur. There was also one out of its cage that you could go up and pet, and that was neat. I've heard of these rabbits before, but I've never seen one in person. They look like tribbles with faces. Cute though. (I think the picture fails to capture the fluffiness of them, though.)
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| Thursday, August 27th, 2009
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7:17 pm - Week in review.
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This week has involved a lot of long hours, working on the latest Habitat house. I want to do a full update with pictures and whatnot, but I'm too tired, so that'll have to wait.
This year's build involved students from Hobart and William Smith (HWS) colleges. They have a campus chapter that gave our affiliate $20,000 to put towards a build. So those students (about 15 of them) have been on site all week. They've been a bunch of good workers, and they seem to be having fun, so that's all good. But there's something that they did this week that surprised me.
See, the future homeowner Chris, had this old, beat-up, kids bike that he was riding to the build. He got into an accident two days ago (which I'll explain later), while riding his bike, and it was pretty beat. I mean it was barely rideable. So he just left his bike outside at the build site overnight thinking that no one would steal it. But it turns out he was wrong. Which is sad, because the bike didn't even have a seat! Some scumbags will just take anything, I guess. Well, last night the HWS Students decided to do something about it. So they each took $10 of their own money, and pooled it together. Then they went to Wal-mart and bought Chris a new bike. They said that they couldn't wait to make it a surprise, so they called him over in the morning to show it to him. Unfortunately I couldn't be there for that, because it would have made a nice photo op. But I was there later on in the day when Chris was looking over the bike. The bike still had the instructions and Wal-mart receipt attached to the handlebars, so he opened the bag they were in and took a look at it. He saw that they had bought the bike with a 1-year lost or stolen replacement plan, where the bike will be replaced if someone steals it. He didn't say much about it, but I can tell it affected him a lot that they did that for him. It looked like he was doing that thing that guys do when they don't say much because they want to make sure that they don't accidentally start crying. It was very touching and I think he was very moved by it all. I'm just glad that there's still good people in this world to counteract all the jerks out there.
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| Sunday, August 16th, 2009
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1:18 am - Quirks
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Since I've had some more time to monkey around with my Buick, I find that I've been noticing a few things about it that were different or not what I expected.
Like the first thing that occurred to me is that I have both a "Service engine soon" light and a "Service vehicle soon" light on my dash. And while I can appreciate the difference between the engine needing service and some other part of the car, I do kinda wish I knew what would kick one light on over the other.
I noticed that the high mounted stop light operates independently of the hazard/4-way flashers. In my Celebrity, whenever you stepped on the brake with the hazard lights flashing, the lights would stop flashing and act as brake lights instead (that is, they would stay on), even though it had a high-mounted stop light. My El Camino has no high-mounted stop light, so its lights did the same. The hazard lights would flash as normal, then when you press the brake light, they would go steady-on. The Buick's high stop light operates independently of the hazard lights. So the turn signals always flash regardless of if you step on the brake or not, and the high stop light operates only when the brake pedal is pressed. So you get a nice combination of having flashing lights and yet still having your brake light indicate when you're slowing down. Of course that might be common on modern cars, but apparently it was different back in the 80's.
It also amuses me that my car will only warn me that I left the headlights on when the doors are open. If I shut the engine off with the headlights on, they will stay on and the car will be silent. When I open the door, *ding*ding*ding*ding*ding*. Once the door is closed again, silence. So it doesn't care if I'm in or out of the car and the headlights are on, so long as the doors are shut. I kinda like it that way. You get some warning, but yet the car won't constantly bug you about it if you want to intentionally park with your engine off and lights on. My Celebrity didn't care at all if you left the lights on or not, and my El Camino would start buzzing the instant you shut the engine off.
Man, it looks like summer finally arrived. This past week the weather has been slowly creeping upward the past few days. I went outside and went to roll down the windows in my car. Now I expected it to be hot in there, but it was freakin' hot in there. Even worse than it has been the past few days. So I went back into the house and grabbed a meat thermometer and set it on the dash for a few minutes. When I went back to check on it, it hit a high of 170 degrees. So I took a picture for kicks. It dropped a bit once I took it off of the dash, still, it was hot. It was also at that point that I realized that a thermometer that is reading 170 degrees is itself, 170 degrees. It's sad that I have to be reminded of that the hard way.
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| Saturday, August 15th, 2009
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1:32 pm - Car stuff.
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I've been tinkering around with my car some more. I replaced the headlights so that their output was a bit brighter and whiter. It bugs me if the light output of my headlights are too low. Sylvania makes a "Cool Blue" headlight that I really like. And oddly enough, even though it has blue in the name, I find that they tend to be just a clean, white light. When compared to a standard headlight, you really see the difference. Standard headlights have this yellowish tint to them. I've used silverstar headlights in the past but I never liked them because they burn out quicker. To their credit, silverstar headlights ARE brighter. But I had two in my car and AJ had two in his, and we burned out three of the four headlights within a year. Now I know that 4 lights are not a statistically significant sample, but it is disturbing that 75% of the lights that I've seen have burned out in a year. So I'll stick with the cool blue lights. They give a better light than standard bulbs, and they last longer. It's a good tradeoff.
Most of the other stuff is standard. New windshield wipers because the old ones failed. (or at least one of them failed) The oil has been changed, and the cabin and engine air filters. The cabin air filter had seen better days. It's funny, I'm not sure if there is a difference in the air speed at high fan speeds, but at low fan speeds I swear it's bringing more air into the car.
Thankfully most of the customization is done on my car. I need to clean it again as you can still see some dirt discoloration in the front seats, but it's passable for now. When I did the oil change on the car, I popped off the radiator cap and saw that the radiator fluid was red. That means one thing, Dex-Cool. Given that I don't know when the radiator fluid was last changed, I need to get rid of that and put some standard issue green radiator fluid into the system instead. I'm not sure if I can do that myself yet, but we'll see.
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| Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
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3:59 pm - Seabreeze
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Yesterday involved a trip to Seabreeze amusement park, which I haven't been to in either two or three years. It was a great day to go, too. The park was full of people, but the lines were short. (many rides were even walk-ons)
Even though Seabreeze would fit in the space of Cedar Point's parking lot, I really do enjoy visiting there at least once a year. The park has a very old-school feel to it, which I like. Most of the rides don't have speakers to give guests warning about how not to be an idiot. And the carousel building is set up like a museum, complete with old photos of the park, hardwood floors, and a locked cabinet of old Wurlitzer paper-reel tunes.
I'm impressed at how smooth the Jack Rabbit still is, considering it's the second-oldest still operating ride in this country. I love the Jack Rabbit, really. That ride is deliciously old-school. The brakes for the ride are not operated with buttons and air brakes, but with 4-foot tall levers that the ride-operator has to lean on. There are NO electronics to control the ride, except for the single electric motor to drive the chain up the lift hill. It's quite refreshing, really. The train doesn't take off with with a loud *PSSSSSSSSHHHT* of the brakes releasing, you just silently start moving instead. And the train doesn't even have seat belts, just a lap bar. It's cool watching the track's mechanics when they move the levers. One of the brake levers causes this one part of the track to lower, allowing the train to roll forward. But it's neat watching that and the gigantic-bucket counterweight raise and lower as the train rolls on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcwuQQun9rQ
I wouldn't call the arcade old-school, more like just "stuck in the 90's."
I arrived to the park a little before 2pm or so. I spent the first two hours just riding dry rides, hitting up nearly everything in the park at least once. It was pretty warm out, but the breeze coming in from the lake kept it from getting too hot out. I really like the Whirl Wind coaster that they installed a few years ago. It's better than the old quantum loop, and, quite frankly, it makes me think that the feeling is similar to what someone would experience should they be flushed down a toilet at some point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc7uX7naBaY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI4MwY0HWv0
I headed over to the waterpark shortly before 4pm. Seabreeze is one of those parks where if you don't have a seasons pass so you might only go for an hour or two at a time, you really should go and visit the water park too. It's a small park, like I said, and seeing the water park side of it gives you a way to kill an extra couple of hours. I stayed over on that side of the park for nearly exactly two hours, and did everything but the kiddie slides. The body flumes, the tube slides, the lazy river, etc... I did the rest of it. The only thing I didn't do was the wave pool. I had fully intended to, but the instant I go over to the edge of the pool, the lifeguards started evacuating it. They said that the pool was down for about an hour due to mechanical problems. (I don't know what the deal is. I mean if the "wave pool" breaks down, then it just becomes a "pool-pool" and is still perfectly usable, but I digress.) I spent around a half hour riding other water rides waiting for the wave pool to open back up, but it didn't by that time. So I changed into some dry clothes and headed back to the main part of the park for the rest of the afternoon. I spent real close to two hours in the water park, and it was beautiful weather for it. Oh, and I saw the best instruction sign I ever have for an amusement park ride:
Instructions for riding the LAZY RIVER:
1.) Sit with your butt in the hole.
(yes there was a 2, and 3) Personally, I'm surprised that they can put the word "butt" on a sign, even though it's one of the most appropriate wordings that they could use.
The rest of the day was spent on the dry side of the park. I stayed until about 8:30 before leaving, though the park is open until 10. It did rain twice when I was there. The first time I was on the tilt-a-whirl. I got on the ride and the weather was bone dry, by the time the ride stopped it was downpouring out. So I ran across to the Jack Rabbit and stood under the awning for five minutes until it stopped. The second time it rained I was having some chili cheese fries (mmmm, delicious) when it started pouring out again. By the time I had finished them, (plus about three minutes) it stopped raining again, and was dry for the rest of the day.
The new ride for the year seems to be the Music Express. It's basically a variation on the Matterhorn, with a large variety of music. They took out the Gyroscope for it though. I kinda was looking forward to riding the Gyroscope too. I mean I know it's just your standard scrambler, but it's an indoor scrambler that's operated in the dark with a trippy light show. That just makes it all better.
I think the only other thing worth mentioning was the last turn on the bumper cars for the day. We were riding around the track and this one kid got turned sideways and jammed up against the wall, causing a backup that gridlocked the whole bumper car arena. The ride operator stopped the ride and picked up the mic and said: ...................I don't even know where to begin............ And then he stepped into the arena and started to take the cars, break them loose one at a time, and move them to other parts of the track to clear the jam. When he got to the main offender's car who started the whole mess, he was relocating the car when someone shouted: "Put him into the wall!" And the ride op complied, rolling his car away from the pack, and burying the nose of it right directly in the corner. When he freed up enough cars so the jam could clear, he started the ride again. Once the gridlock cleared up, (in about 10-15 seconds) he stopped the ride a second time and said: "Thank you for riding the bumper cars here at Seabreeze!" And everyone laughed. Good times, good times.
I should try and make it there more often. Seabreeze is quite a fun little park.
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