Fire Karl Rove

What's Bush waiting for? If he's a man of his word, he will fire Karl Rove.

SheiKra

SheiKra rocks! Shirley and Ben and I had planned to do this as a family, but then Shirley went and broke her foot (1 2). So last weekend Ben and I popped over to Busch Gardens
for a few hours to ride SheiKra and hit several of the other cool
rides. Adding to the coolness is that, as Florida residents, we get a
two-for-one deal (buy a ticket and get to come back again on any
additional day this year). Anyway... SheiKra is by far the
smoothest coaster I've ever ridden. It seems like the ride is over very
soon, but they say it goes for 3 minutes. Maybe the meaning of time is
altered by the adrenaline. Oh, and it turns out that Ben and I got to
sit in the front row :-) ...Nothing like dangling looking down that 200
foot vertical drop for a few seconds before the fall. What a rush! If
you get the chance, do give it a shot. If you're not sure, or if you're
just curious, enjoy the QuickTime version of the ride.

After 25 years ...we have a bedroom set

A little later this month, Shirley and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Aside from having an odd time of it comprehending that we could possibly be old enough for that (although, truth be told, we were married when we were each 3 years old) ...we have never had a bedroom furniture set. We've always had a good mattress, but it was typically on a metal frame or plywood, and the 'nightstands' for many years were simply speakers (I was a musician before becoming a geek, so we had speakers that were a convenient height). Well, as an anniversary gift to ourselves, we went to the local Kane's store and bought a set. We love the design, and overall the pieces are built quite well. But there have been some issues.

One of the guys delivering / installing the set said that they always have problems putting this set together. Rather that place a call to their service department (we'd have to wait days for them to come out) I decided we would fix this ourselves ...and do a better job than they would have anyway. I've annotated the pic to describe the issue with the side rails.

Each of the 3 slats that go across the bottom have one vertical support in the middle. There are supposed to be 2 inserts with threads to accommodate screws that fasten the board above to the vertical support. But those parts were missing, so the guys left it like this. That doesn't look too secure to me; what do you think?

We went back to the store to see about getting the missing hardware (I brought the screws with me) and they gave us some pieces that did have the correct thread size. But they were not the right pieces, and after measuring, we saw that even if they did work, the vertical supports would, at their max height, still be 1/2 inch too short. So again, we decided to do it better ourselves. I picked up some furniture leg brackets, affixing each of them with 4 screws to give us 2 supports per slat, rather than just one. I also picked up some hardwood furniture legs to fit the brackets, cut them to fit, screwed them into the brackets, and have them each resting on a caster on the floor. This is now a sturdy bed.

Oh yeah, and the wood on part of one of the footboard posts is broken. We documented that before the guys left, but the solution from Kane's is for them to order a new footboard. It's been just over a week, so I'll call tomorrow and get an update. The damage is strictly cosmetic rather than structural, so it's ok until the replacement comes.

This is a blurry pic, but it shows part of the latches on the armoire. They were bent beyond functioning when delivered, so again I decided that we could do a better job ourselves. I've replaced the latches on the armoire with magnetic latches top and bottom, and have now removed the dental floss that we'd been using to keep the doors closed.

But overall ...we really like this set. Shirley used her creativity and sewing prowess to find some awesome fabric at $6 a yard and make a bedspread and matching sham (which I've learned is a fancy word for pillow). We also decided that this shade of green on the walls is more relaxing than the purple that we'd first tried. This, to us, truly looks like Florida. It was worth the wait :)

Just when we thought Bush couldn't get slimier

OK, I have never like George W Bush. That's putting it mildly. I
consider him a phony, spoiled, dishonest, greedy, sneaky putz. Phony,
because he'll say that he's pro-life, then lie to start a war that (so
far) has cost the lives of over 1,700 Americans and many thousands (or
tens of thousands or more) Iraqis, wounded over 13,000 Americans (but
Bush won't properly fund their care when they return from serving their
country). Phony because he'll use a phrase like "No child left behind"
but then not properly fund it. OK, you know many more of these items,
so I don't need to list them all here. Heck, I've held off on posting
much political stuff for months because when I think about what Bush
and Cheney and Rove and the rest of them have been getting away with, I
get too mad to function. My wife's blood pressure has been a health
challenge; I don't need to send mine into the high triple digits on top
of it. Yeah, I'll skip listing out all the things that I don't like
about Bush (I do need to get to bed this evening, after all).

So after being appointed to the presidency and giving a talk to the
staff early on about how he would not tolerate even the appearance of
impropriety ...basically making it sound like the White House had
finally been exorcised of the demons and the Bush team would bring the
dawn of honesty and integrity and shun all evil ...Then Joe Wilson
ticks of the Administration and a few days later Wilson's wife is outed
and Bush says that anyone in his administration who played a part would
be fired. McClellan states that he has spoken directly to Rove and that
Rove had nothing to do with it. ...THEN the world learns that well,
yes, Rove DID have something to do with it. So Bush stays quiet for
several days as the media storm brews and he figures out how to
back-pedal his way out of this one. NOW he says that anyone found to be
guilty of a crime related to this case will be fired. (Oh, and this is
a real good time to nominate someone for the Supreme Court ...give the
press something else to report and get Karl Rove out of the headlines)

Hmmm... There is certainly WAY more than the appearance of
impropriety here. Rove at least said words to the effect of, "Yeah, I
heard that too". Now I would not at all put it past a scumbag like
Novak to state something of which he was not sure, just to see if he
could weasel a confirmation from his mark. Rove is a smart guy, so he
would be aware of this. To confirm what Novak stated is to disclose the
identity of a CIA operative. It does not matter if Novak called Rove
(and not the other way 'round) or if Matthew Cooper called Rove (and
not the other way 'round). If Karl Rove in any way indicated that
Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, then Karl Rove went FAR beyond the
appearance of impropriety.

What the heck is so hard about simply saying, "I cannot comment
about that"? Karl Rove WAS involved, and Bush ought to be man enough to
honor his word and fire the bum.

Hurricane panels are done!

We have finally finished the installation of tracks, drilling of holes, and other tasks related to being ready to cover our windows and doors with metal panels if/when a hurricane should strike. Whew! This has been a chore and a half. Shown here is a pic of one of the front windows with a few panels installed. That was taken just over a week ago, on 07 July 2005, when we were preparing in case Hurricane Dennis decided to pay us a visit. But the one remaining job was to drill the holes and do the prep for panels to cover the front door (we plan to use a small door in the back from a bathroom to the outside - and one of the garage doors in the front - as our emergency exits in the event of a storm).
So today I finished the job. This pic shows some of the holes drilled below the front door. Our Bosch hammer drill does a great job of boring the necessary holes in the stucco and cement block, but MAN, drilling into the brick is HARD! The drill still handled it fine, but it was definitely slower going that just boring into the regular cement. So Shirley and Ben decided to come out and let me know that the weather stations were saying that in our area it was currently 93F (34C), and that with the humidity, it felt more like 106F (41C). I told them that really helps a lot to hear that, as if I didn't already know that it was warm. So they told me they'd be in the pool if I needed anything (I discovered that they actually were out back painting a cloud mural on the ceiling of the lanai, so that's pretty cool).
The other thing I've been working on lately is installing one-sided deadbolts at the top and bottom of the front door and (soon) the pool bath door. That's just one more thing that's recommended to help secure a home when a hurricane strikes. OK, gotta go ....just got word that I need to get the barbecue going for dinner. Cheers!