It’s been 2024
The year of the floors and doors I might call it. There has been a lot of change this year, and it will probably in the long run be remembered by the long running remodel of our house. Throughout everything that has been going on . All the ups and the downs, this remodel project of the new house has been a constant.
I spend a decent amount of time journaling on my old computers (not as much as I would like) but I still need to handcuff myself to a keyboard in order to crank out a blog here. Then I find myself condensing these huge swaths of time down into a just a few paragraphs. There has been a ridiculous amount of things happen this year, and a ridiculous amount of ridiculous things.
It has been a year of loss. Katie lost both her best friend and her mother within weeks. I still wish I could help carry the weight of her grief from time to time. Even just for a day. It’s hard watching someone you love suffer. Then later this year we lost my Grandma Dee and a co-worker of mine within weeks. I’m sick and tired of funerals.
I will have completed a year here in Hutchinson on January 1st. By all measurable metrics, it’s been a great year. Sales are up, profit is up. But it has been challenging to balance work and personal life for sure. Whether at home, or at work, there’s always something I could be working on instead of relaxing or playing games. It’s been hard to do things I want to do for fun, without feeling guilty I’m not giving that time instead to family or work. And it’s hard to line up so many obligations without resenting that it’s taking away from my own personal interests. I don’t think I’m unique in these struggles, as everyone strives to find that balance. But for sure I’ve felt off balance for a good part of the year.
The Youtube channel has been on the back burner. I have some video yet of the move from January that I still need to find a way to edit into a video. And I have been reluctant to dive into making new videos until I get my room set up the way that I want. And of course that’s something that will take time from all the other things. But I need to just crank out a quick and easy video to get me back in the swing of things.
So the house… we moved in December 15th, but even before that we ripped out all the floors upstairs in 2023, painted all the walls. It’s an old doublewide trailerhouse, so we pulled all the wall strips off that they used to cover up the drywall seams and mudded in the drywall so that it looks more like a normal wall without all the strips.
The goal was to have everything done by Christmas. It was a good goal. Haha. We were sorta on track too, but a delay in the trim of about a month, and here we are still working on it. But even though there is still work to do, we have gotten so much done. Replaced the floor in every room upstairs except the bathrooms. That’s three bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room hall, foyer, launrdy room. It’s a lot of floor! Painted every room but the bathrooms. New doors…
The doors have been a journey. We went and bought some pre-hung doors. In trailer houses though, they didn’t have door casings. They just trimmed out the rough opening with fake wood and hung a door on it. So when we measured the door openings, and bought doors, the new doors were too wide. I mean the DOOR was the right size for the opening. But the door casing wasn’t in the measurement. Learned that about buying doors. Also, every door was about 2 inches too tall. So we were faced with either returning these doors and custom ordering special doors. Or … making these fit. The cost of 10 custom doors didn’t make much sense, so we busted out the sawzall and made them fit. We widened every single doorway. And we cut the bottom off of every door. It has been a monumental amount of work, but I’m satisfied with the finished product.
It’s hard not to be proud of all the work we have gotten done. It’s not perfect, but I can see the finished product in my head and we are really close.
2024 is also the year I got engaged! Katie and I had been talking about it for quite a while, but on her birthday I finally got down on one knee and asked her with all her friends around. It was a lot of fun and even though we knew it was going to happen she was still surprised! It was nerve wracking having the ring around for the couple weeks leading up to the day. I’m not especially good at hiding things, or waiting to give gifts that I’m excited about. So I was pretty proud of myself.
The only one who knew was her Dad, as I had talked to him a month or so prior and asked his permission to ask Katie to marry me. He was a good partner in crime too because he never said a word!
We’re set to get married in October of 2025. Probably before I write the next blog entry here!
Looking back we’ve gotten to do so many cool things. We took the kids to the KC Renfest again this year. Ever since my first trip I knew I wanted to share that with Katie and the Kids. And this was the second year we all got to go. Luke started asking about it last year, asking when it was going to be and when we would get to go again. This year it was quite a different experience than last year. 2023 was rainy and mild. The crowd was pretty small. This time it was warmer and the crowd was big! Luke did find a cool knife to take home, and Emma got some pretty jewelry. It was a blast, but I think for 2025 I want to try to find another location and see what it’s like. Colorado Springs has a big Renfest out that way and while it’s a longer drive, it’s not so far that it’s impossible.
This place is the first place I’ve had where I live “in the country” since (depending on how you look at it) Woodlawn. I guess if you count living at a feedyard the country, then there was that too! But first time I’ve ever had to worry about the propane tank. Maintaining a driveway. All the critters you’ll find.
We’ve had deer drinking out of our pool. An armadillo got stuck in our basement window well one day. Rabbits ate all the sunflowers we tried to plant this year. And there’s about three cats roaming around that we don’t claim but they stop by. No snakes yet!
We are far enough from town that it’s no big deal to run and grab what you need. I’m actually closer to a grocery store than I was when I lived in Albert. But we are far enough off of pavement that you really have to come looking for us. Nobody is ever “in the neighborhood”!
So you may have gathered from the tone of this blog that this year has been a lot. It’s been tough mentally but really so many great things are going on. We have accomplished a lot both here at home and at work. And the losses we have had have really been driving home that life is too short to be anything but happy. There is so much I am grateful for in my life right now. And I have a lot to look forward to! Another year in the books.
So Many Pies
I feel like I’ve got a little bit of something in everything right now. “A finger in every pie” I believe the saying goes. I’ve gotten the opportunity to dive into a few more projects here recently, and some still waiting to get done.
The Basement has been sitting in pre-construction phase for a while now. After the flood and ripping everything out, then flood 2, I’ve been a little gun shy to put it all back together. But my Dad kinda has been leaning on me to get past the fear that it might flood again, and start rebuilding, so I have. We got some drywall put up and I almost am done putting in another in-wall shelf that Andrea and I have talked about for years to go under our TV. We’ve been making some visible progress, and that feels good! We should have some help coming this weekend to finish off the drywall. That would be fantastic. Then it can really come together after that.
For fun I’ve been having some good times with the Apple IIe from the side of the road, cleaned up and restored that. Stopped short of retrobriting it because a) It’s not too yellowed, and b) I’ve seen some of those projects go bad. So I’ll leave it be. I’d like to find some junk electronics to test the process on and see what works.
Another side project is an old Dell server that I’ve absconded from work. It was taken out of service several years ago, and honestly doesn’t even have a TB of storage across all the drives. But it’s a thing I’ve been playing with, the ultimate goal is to set it up as a file server, and VM box for emulating retro operating systems. So far I have Windows 95 up and running.
I’m still studying spanish, though more passively. I need to get back to it actively, I still expose myself to spanish media, my devices are in Spanish. But I want to make another hard push leading up to the new Animal Crossing game coming out in March. I have resolved to play that game from the beginning in Spanish only. It should be fun!
Basement is the big looming thing though. I want to get that put back together to the point we can get the carpet ordered, which is still a few months away at this point with all the painting to do even after the drywall is up. So I’m trying not to look TOO far down the tunnel.
After that, it will be time to tear into Andrea’s ATV and see what’s up with the engine. It runs, but it makes an awful noise. I don’t know if it’s a bearing, a piston, or what. Won’t know until we tear it apart.
It all gets done… slowly!
08.22.19The State of Things
I am in my zone. For whatever reason I feel like a lot of stuff has been coming together. Yeah sure there’s a lot out of place, but nothing that I feel like is out of control. We’ve had a tree fall on our house, well a big part of one. A flood. ATV problems. Car problems. Budget problems. But all that seems like stuff that we can knock out just given enough time. All the imporant stuff is great.
Emma is growing so fast now. Every day she is picking up new words and phrases, she is starting to be able to communicate. It’s a little bit of a relief. Every stage is a lot of fun with kids, but communication sure makes the job of parent easier in a lot of ways. She wants to be involved in everything, absolutely everything. Yesterday I was going to run out to the shop real quick to get some tools for the basement, and she absolutely would not stand for letting me go alone. She had to tag a long and see what’s up. And then she followed me down to the basement and took some screwdrivers and went around touching it to various things and promptly exclaiming “I did it!”. Then she grabbed the hammer and put a couple new dents in the walls before I could notice…. oh well. It’s all getting rebuilt anyway! At least I have an expert in demolition on my team.
Luke is in 2nd grade. That’s incredible. I hope he’s enjoying growing up. From about 3rd until 5th grade I remember having the time of my life. He’s a smart kid but takes a little pushing to get going. But it’s so cool when he wants to learn about something and gets totally into it. For the longest time he was all about Titanic. It was Titanic everything. Right now he’s getting into games and stuff. I had my first parent scratching my head at a video game moment when he wanted to play Robox. I had just assumed it was a Minecraft knockoff. But when I started to read about it… I was way off. If anything it seems more like “Second Life” for kids. People can create these different scenarios that you can play and partake in. And that means that people can create ANYTHING, and the internet being the internet… it’s not all wholesome, even if it is wrapped in this kid themed playground. So we locked down his permissions. He can’t chat with anybody, he can only play approved scenarios. But you know, he’s 8 years old. He’s a good kid, but at 8, you still trust pretty much everybody.
Andrea and I got to go on a little impromptu trip together a couple of weeks ago. The kids went to stay with Andrea’s sister, and we decided we were just going to go hop in the Jeep, camp at Wilson then drive. We had the top off the Jeep and got a bunch of sun on day one. I myself got a little crispy. I think Andrea did okay though. It was hot as balls at Wilson Lake. Not bad in the shade, but there wasn’t hardly a tree big enough to catch any. We ended up spending time sitting on the ground in the shade of the Jeep drinking all the water we brought with us.
After that it was fun just to explore the countryside. We generally stayed off the highways. We found the Geographic Center of the United States completely by accident. Just little stuff like that. Exploring, being together, wind in your hair sorta thing. It was a good time, but I think we both also appreciated home when we got there.
And on the homefront the basement is the big looming project. It feels really daunting to be honest. We are still doing de-construction and clean up. There’s so many little things, and I want to make sure all the mold is as dead as I can get it. I know mold can always come back if it gets wet down there again. But I just don’t want mold to find a way to start going again under normal circumstances. It doesn’t smell all musty down there anymore, which is a good thing. I think we’ll get to the point here in a couple of weeks that we can start hanging sheetrock again. We want to build some shelving into the walls for the media stuff while were at it. Kind of like the bookshelves under the stairs. I guess it will go quicker if we don’t have to be careful this time! Haha.
But where’s all the money for it come from? Well, we have some savings, but we’re pretty good about earmarking our dollars and what they are saved for. We have some money saved up for an insurance deductible. We think we can use that and take some from a few of our other goals to get this done. I’m planning on doing all of it ourselves, except for the carpet. I love learning new skills, but carpet is a job that doesn’t look fun, or sound fun, and if I mess it up, I’ve wasted a lot of expensive carpet.
So that is the current state of things. A little off balance it feels. But excited to have the projects that we do. Now I just need to get cracking on all of it instead of playing Rocket League and Octopath Traveler in the evenings… but those are goals too!
05.21.19Careful What You Wish For
At the beginning of this year, I wrote an entry about how I wanted more projects in my life. How I wanted to create things. So far, mission accomplished.
We finished our shelves down stairs. They turned out pretty great I think. We’ve already run out of room, but I have no regrets, as this was about as big as those shelves could fit in there.
After that I started tearing into the Wrangler, which is still up on jack stands in the garage. I have the feeling this is either going to end up being an easier… or much harder project than I have anticipated, but since the Wrangler is a bit of a toy, it’s been put on the back burner as we fired up all sorts of other things after it got started.
The biggest one has been the new floor, which has been pretty well documented on my Twitter feed @kartmaster. I’ve helped putting down flooring like this before. That snap together stuff. But I’ve never been the dude in charge before so it was a bit intimidating. Mostly because if I screw it up we have to live in it and look at it every day.
Sometimes people will say to me things like, “You should do that for other people and make some money.” Here’s the thing. This took me like a month… working after work. Taking a day off when I just didn’t feel like it. Getting mad. Nah. There’s a reason people pay other people to get this done. And if I were to fall one way or the other from the DIY fulcrum, it would definitely be the customer side.
We also sold the Cutlass and the red Jeep here this year too! I’ll got into some more detail about the emotions behind all that in another post, but selling things like that is work. I hate selling stuff, putting up with the people. Wasting your time on the flakes. But it’s done and I feel pretty good about how it all ended up.
Selling those led to getting a truck. I’ve never really needed a truck especially since we got the trailer. Almost everything we’d need to do could be hauled around there. But when we started riding ATVs, and as Luke gets older and we’re looking at getting a gas powered one for him, logistically it is going to be a lot easier to put his ATV in the truck, and the other two on the trailer. Even with his little power wheels one now, loading up is a two person job to get Andrea’s beast turned sideways on the trailer. So I’m looking forward to spending more time riding, and less time loading!
Of course days after buying the truck I was already diving into a project there. On the test drive, I knew right away the first thing I would have to fix was going to be the seat. It would slide around as you were driving like you were sitting on marbles. It lead to feeling really not in control, haha. “How hard could it be!?” Turns out, actually, for once, not that hard. I cobbled together some scrap pieces from around the shop, built some new bushings, put it all back together and it works great.
I’m thankful to be able to do these sorts of things. Thankful for Youtube mostly. No matter what my problem, I’m NEVER the first person to have it and there’s almost always an ingenious way to fix it that I never would have thought of myself. I’m thankful to have a wife like Andrea that trusts me to take these things on. She used to ask me, “Are you sure we can handle something like that?” back in the day when I’d bring up a project. Now she knows that… it may not go like we planned, but we’ll figure it out.
To be honest though, I’m ready for a break from some projects for a while. I’m ready to get out and play. We haven’t been riding at all this year except on the dirt roads around the house. I have tools and piles of wood, or tires, or supplies everywhere. I need to return to a normal resting state of existence for a while. Careful what you wish for I guess.
01.11.19So far… so good.
I had mentioned in the previous post that one of the things I really want to get back to is creating things. Making things. And thus far in 2019 I’m off to a pretty good start. We built some under the stair shelves that turned out pretty great. Not necessarily perfect, but I’m more than satisfied given the talent and tools that I had available.
Overall since the holidays have wrapped up, I’ve been in a pretty good place mentally. It’s so easy to stop and think about all the things you want to do, or want to have, then get sad that you don’t have them, or convince yourself that you’ve made the wrong choices to get where you are. I think that’s a little short sighted.
Problem is that line of thinking has no end. It’s a game with no way to win. For example. I want to build and make things, I also want to spend time with my family and have fun watching the kids grow up. I want to fix up and restore the black car and the Jeep. I want to play more games and get through some of them that I really enjoy. I want to go see family more. I want to ride ATVs. I want to play D&D more. I want to go on vacations. I want to study Spanish. I want to stay home.
Choosing to do any one of those things, takes away from all of the others. It’s the opportunity cost of making your choice. Everything you choose to do comes at the cost of whatever else you COULD have done instead. But I refuse to feel bad about these choices. Because the option to do ALL of them was never an option at all. You are only one person that can be in one place at a time. To be disappointed that you can’t be everywhere with unlimited resources at all times is something silly to be upset about.
I’m putting my best effort into being thankful for the opportunities that I have to do any number of things. To not be resentful of the experiences that I couldn’t have, but rather to be grateful for those that I did.
12.18.18To Create
I need to take some more time to sit down and make things. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Whether it’s something artistic, or something useful. Putting something out there into the world is super rewarding. I’m going to get there…
First things first though, you have to take care of the things you have to do. Work, yes. But I’m trying to weave more creativity in to my day to day hum drum tasks. The trick is not spending too much time on it. I work because I like my job, but I also work so that I don’t have to. So that I can spend time with my family, so I can do some of the other things I always say I “don’t have time to do”. But even in this time I need to find more opportunities to put a creative spin on the regular. It’s easy with my show to try something new, see if it works or not. Harder when you’re filling out reports or making schedules. And I need to finish my Christmas shopping!
The internet is great for inspiration, but at some point you have to stop scrolling. In my scrolls this morning, looking for Christmasy things to talk about on my show, I spotted a wreath made out of caution tape that someone had made for the police station they work at. And I thought, that’s the kind of stuff I wish I could find time in my day to do! Haha. There’s always going to be the nay-sayers wondering if you used company time, or wasted office supplies. But I feel like there should be a little bit of company resources dedicated to joy and comradery.
I’ve made quite a few things I’m proud of this year. I made a mount for a light bar on my ATV, fixed and fabricated a new power steering bracket for the Wrangler. I made a little plastic flip card for Luke’s bike that makes it sound like a motorcycle. I made my awesome box for the trailer. I’m just starting to feel the itch again I guess.
I want to finish our shelves in the basement. We’ve had 3 holes in our walls for months now, and we just need to get some plywood and some trim to finish them off for what will be some really nice stepped inset shelves. It’s a 1 day project and just need to do it! I still want to make a MAME Arcade cabinet. But that is a bit more of a financial restriction. I need to build some easy storage for some of my tools and spare parts in the shop. Most of that I can do with scraps I have laying around. And there’s the big project of fixing the Jeep frame that I just need to start pulling things apart. And there’s that Clarissa Explains it All podcast that I’m still looking for a dedicated co-host…
All in time. I know. I look back and I got more done than it “feels” like. Not guilty or anything. Just gotta make time for more. Balance… balance is everything. Balance is hard.
How Did I Get Here?
I don’t know how it happened. But it happened all rather suddenly. We became an ATV family. I’ve always felt the same way about powersports as I’ve felt about exercise. If there’s not a destination, if you aren’t GOING somewhere, then what is it all for? You go around and around, end up in the same place then, big whoop. It’s not for everybody, but turns out it’s for us.
It began probably almost two years ago. A friend of ours bought an ATV, she rides along the river with her family and kept sharing all these fun stories. “You should get an ATV! You can come ride!” Yeah, yeah. That’s a lot of money, and more work keeping things running just to go tear it all up. It didn’t sound that fun. But… here in town, several people have ATVs and they putt around town on them. Now THAT’s more my speed. I don’t need anything super sporty. I’d just like to have one I can roam around on and take off the road once in a while. And then maybe someday go down to the river and pretend I know what I’m doing.
So we bought the Green Arctic Cat. It’s 18 years old, but it was 4×4, and ready to roll. Not too pricey, plus we already had the trailer… so…
It had been a long time since I’d drove an ATV, so I wasn’t too sure of myself. But it didn’t take long to get used to driving it around the neighborhood. It’s a “farmer’s ATV” I called it. Not fast, not flashy, not cool. That checks a lot of boxes for me! Eventually I loaded it up on the trailer, and took it down to the river for a little fun with Lucas!
It was all going great, until Andrea was out riding. It was her first time out and I probably should have given her some guidelines. But she’d taken Luke with her to ride, so I figured, “She won’t get too crazy with Luke on there.” Well they didn’t get dangerous, but she got into some deep water. I think maybe she was thinking of those Youtube videos of crazy people taking their $10,000 ATVs through 4ft deep water. Except that this was an almost 20 year old ATV that was maybe 1/10th the cost!
Long story short, the starter went out. ATV out of service. It wasn’t her fault, but she still felt bad that it happened while she was riding.
Even still. With one broken ATV, Andrea was still hooked. We figured we’d get this one fixed quickly (spoiler, it’s still not fixed) and she now wanted one of her own. Still dumb to the world of power sports we went to look at another smaller ATV in our price range. It was more of a sport quad than mine, which she liked. Ended up buying a two stroke Yamaha Blaster that was even older than the Arctic Cat!
Never buy anything from a redneck. You’d think my Blazer experience would have been enough to teach me “never again” but NO! Only problem. It smokes a little bit. Okay… a lot a bit, and would sputter when the RPMs got high. I know that two strokes smoke, at least old ones do. But this one was too much. But it was a great DEAL right!?
So let’s tear it apart and see what the problem is. It’s just parts, right!?
So what was the problem? Ok, quick 2 stroke engine school. There are two seals on either side of the crankshaft. Those seals have to be air tight otherwise the piston will suck transmission oil into the crankcase and burn it. No sweat, change the seals… good as new, right? Nope.
See that. SEE THAT!? So, that is a gouge by a SCREWDRIVER into an aluminum engine case. The engine case. That of which the entire engine is built upon. Not by me. Not by my screwdriver. Somebody else. Maybe the guy who sold it to us. Maybe somebody before him. But some cheap bastard who didn’t want to spend FIFTEEN DOLLARS on a seal puller jacked this engine up real good.
So options, what are the options? Sell the Blaster for parts. Take the loss. Put the new seal in and just let it smoke and keep a spare spark plug in your pocket at all times. Or, try to fix it.
Welp. It’s all I could do. JB Weld, we’ll see if you bring another miracle. I filled the crevasse, pressed in the seal, and put it all back together. I didn’t even know if it would run. I let it cure for a whole week. Not because it needed it but more because at least then it was Schrodinger’s 4 wheeler. Until you try to start it, it both runs, and doesn’t run at the same time. Finally got up the nerve. It took several kicks, but eventually, it came to life!
I took it for a test drive, and it scared the CRAP out of me. For a little 200cc, I didn’t expect as much power as it had. It literally scared me. It still smoked a bit, but eventually, the oil that had gotten into the crank case burned off, and it now just smokes “a lil bit”.
Since then it’s been a really fun ATV for me to drive. That’s right… me. This was originally Andrea’s remember? But she never did get comfortable with the high revs of a 2 stroke engine. A bigger 4 stroke has more low end power and is more forgiving about what gear you’re in. She didn’t like how once you got into the higher RPMs the Blaster wanted to take off like a puppy ready to chase a bunny.
The plan is to sell this one, but nobody here likes it, which kinda makes me like it. I’ve put a lot of work into it and it’s taught me a lot… so… I’m kinda attached now. Maybe, I’ll keep it? No matter what, It’s brought a lot of joy to us and the people we’ve been able to share it with, so I think it’s worth what we paid already.
So let’s do a head count. 1 broken ATV, 1 fixed ATV that no one wants to ride except me. So what happens next… Andrea gets what she REALLY wants.
So here’s the secret to what Andrea likes: anything cooler than yours. Haha! She ended up getting a Honda TRX 450er. This is a big girl 4-wheeler for sure. Big size, big engine, fancy pants electric start, and finally… a helmet. She likes it! And she likes to ride it! And it’s officially the newest vehicle we own, including the ones we drive everyday. Haha. She’s content and I think we’re finally set on the fleet.
Wait? Whut? Oh… no. What about Lucas! Heaven FORBID he be subjected to just riding with us. Andrea found a little used electric powered on on the local classifieds. Just his size. Just his speed (slow). Now we have another.
But remember that trailer?…. Too small. Big enough for one. That’s it. Good greif… what a freakin’ hobby. One thing leads to another and now we have a trailer big enough to haul all of this old junk around on. FINALLY, we’re done, right? RIGHT? Gawd I hope so.
So what is so fun about it all? How did we get in so deep so fast? I mean the riding is fun, don’t get me wrong. Even though I’ve only been down the trails a good distance only a handful to times. With Emma being just a baby, we have never been able to go out as a family. But the best part by far has been sharing the experiences with people. Friends and family coming over and taking off for a ride with me or Andrea. Watching people learn how to drive them, killing them, giving them crap about it, then watching them putt away once they finally get it down. And then the big smile on their face when the get back to home base.
So with it being the middle of winter, and the holidays over, I have some work to do to get ready before spring. Ranging from little things to big things. The red one just needs the carb cleaned out and chain tightened. The green one needs the engine put back together and new bushings all the way around, and the white one needs a new head gasket, exhaust flange, and a bunch of other stuff.
It’s been a lot of fun! I hope that this summer we can spend more time riding, and a little less time shopping and fixing, haha!
A Day For the Toronado
It’s been over a year since the one and only time the Toronado broke down on the side of the road. I’ve had it back together for a while, but I haven’t really given it any love until today.
Here it sits, like it has for months.
I tried to start it up and move it before Luke’s birthday party back in August, but the battery was dead. I charged up the battery and the old thing fired right up once the fuel got pumped back up into the carburetor.
I pulled it into the garage for an oil change. Our 3rd oil change in 24 hours in this garage. Haha.
This is what dirty and neglected looks like. Leaves, dirt, bird poo. Time was starting to pass it by. Sad to see it like this after all the work I put into painting it.
I washed out the engine bay. Halfway because it was just nasty. And the other half was because there were spiderwebs everywhere and I didn’t want any spiders hanging around!
I went for a short cruise and came back home. I don’t have current tags on it right now, so I didn’t want to drive it too far. And I need new ball joints before I really feel safe on the highway. So it was just an Albert tour for today. But I did make the point to BACK it into the driveway so the neighbors can tell it DOES run! Haha.
So there we go. The ball joints should be around $100 all together. Then I plan on driving this thing! Part of me wants to fix the hail dents, re-do the vinyl, get new bumper fillers and paint it. The other part of me want to just drive it as a “beater” during the winter and nasty days so we can keep the Cutlass clean. I’m really torn which way to go. I just like this car so darn much!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xdtjZyl2kE
09.3.13The List
This will begin a difficult series of posts. It’s the beginning of another fall sports season and there are a lot of teams out there making cuts. They’re whittling their best players down to the best of the best.
Well when it comes to games, there are literally hundreds of phenomenal games out there that deserve to be played and re-played. But if you had to cut it all down to a starting lineup, who would make the cut?
I’m going to go through my games in my collection and decide, if I had to leave it all behind and pick one game to represent each genre, one game that I could play over and over in that category, what would it be? So I’m going to have to make some tough choices to determine my all time favorite game in each of the following genres:
- Action/Adventure
- Arcade
- Fighting
- First Person Shooter
- Party
- Platform
- Puzzle
- Racing
- Role Playing Game
- Simulation
- Strategy
- Sports
Did I leave out any important categories? Let me know in the comments.
I’m going to have to leave some really great games on the shelf. And just to warn you in some of the categories like Fighting, there WILL be some great games left out of discussion entirely because those are genres I just never quite got into and as such some iconic games I simply never have played. They will still be represented though.
Then my ultimate goal is once this list is completed, to PLAY these games, capture the video, produce it out and make a show out of it. This will become my project for Friday night’s “Project Night”. None of that can commence though until “The List” is finalized.
So check back soon as I make the final cut for my defacto “Sports Game”!
07.19.13Project Night: 1
What a rockin’ success! I went into today not knowing for sure what project night was going to be. Ultimately I envision some large time consuming project that I can whittle away at every Friday and maybe on weekends. Something like building a MAME cabinet. But I haven’t quite narrowed down the sweet spot of awesomeness and what we can afford right now. So for tonight, I decided to do a little one night project.
I had an old 2×4 screwed to the wall a while ago that I used to hang the shovels on. Well since then, I’ve out grown it a bit. I’ve gotten tired of walking around tools or propping them up in a corner, so I figured a great project for tonight would be to do something about it!
It really doesn’t get more simple. I took some more 2×4 and screwed them into the wall where the studs are. Then just used regular nails for the “hooks” to hang the tools on. It’s ghetto fabulous, but at least it’s organized.
Most of my projects take three times longer than I plan on them taking. So I usually plan on them taking that long (yes, it’s a vicious cycle). But tonight went about as quick as it should. Well, almost. I guess it took twice as long as it should because the battery for my circular saw kept dying. It just doesn’t hold a charge anymore. So it took me about 30 minutes to cut a 2×4. So I guess it was about right.
I then started looking around and thinking, what else can I hang and get off the floor? That’s when I saw the car ramps and noticed they had a nice little hole in them, perfect for hanging. So I got some more spare fasteners that I had and made new perches for my car ramps and wheel chucks. Got ’em off the floor and since they hang under the cabinet, they aren’t in the way.
It was a good night for sure. I freed up some space and in one car garage like mine, space is a premium!
I look forward to the next project night. I’m almost more excited to see what the next project will be that will make life even better!