Twev1701.net

I just had three days off in a row…none of them belonging to me. It’s my goal by year’s end to have at least 1 day off where I don’t have to be anywhere, or do anything.

UPDATE: I had a brain fart. Here is a link to the English version of that page.

http://www.artlebedev.ru/portfolio/optimus/

The site is in Russian, but it is a fully configurable keyboard that uses OLED (electrophosphorescence) to light up each key. Not only do the tiny OLED displays light up the key, but it can change the layout with pre-set profiles for different application/games. If there was a place to order one on that site, it would sooo be mine!!

Yesterday was our one year anniversary. Jess and I met in person for the first time on July 8th, 2004 in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Since then, my life has never been the same!

We talked for a few days about what to do for our anniversary, but like always, the weather kept making us change our plans. The funny thing is, what we ended up doing for the day and having a great time doing, was literally a decision made in a parking lot.

I had been planning to take her to dinner at this “secret” resturant for a few months, however, what to do that day was not planned. Since we had no concrete plans because of the rain, we decided to spend the morning just doing some running around that we needed to do anyway. I bought her breakfast at Friendly’s, we went to Sam’s Club, and that was about it. We sat in Sam’s parking lot for a little while listening to the new CD I bought her, trying to figure out what to do next. That’s when Jess said she wanted to go to Scranton. I had no problem with this, but had to laugh on the inside since that’s where the resturant is located that I was taking her to that night. So, when we pulled into Scranton, I asked her where she wanted to go and she said that she wanted to check out the Steamtown museum. Since I had never been there before, I thought it would be pretty cool to check out as well. So, we went there.

It’s funny how when you live somewhere and you want to do something, your mind automatically thinks of places that are not around you. Want to go to a museum? Go down to D.C. and the Smithsonian. Want to go to a zoo? Head down to Philaldelphia or D.C.. So, I live about 20 minutes south of Scranton, have all my life. But whenever I go to Scranton it’s either to see a show, visit the comic book store, or head to the mall. Never have I even thought about visting the National Park we have right there.

Let me tell you something, it was a great day! We did just about everything but take the train ride. Instead, we chose to take a tour of the back Steam Shop. It was really cool seeing how they take apart and repair old “turn of the century” steam locomotives. I never really realized that something like this was literally in our backyard. It was a very cool time.

Our original plan was to head back home, get changed, and then go out to eat. But, by the time we were done seeing everything we wanted to see, we were both starving and really didn’t want to drive 20 minutes back to Wilkes-Barre to get changed, and then drive 20 minutes back to Scranton to have dinner since we were already in Scranton. So, we decided to go just as we were. Well, needless to say Jess loved the place. I’m going to try and get her to post some pics she took of the place on her moblog and put a link to her moblog over on the right a little later.

We both had an excellent day, dinner, and evening together. Some would say it was a flawless day. Here’s to the first of hopefully many years together!!!

Last night was something right out of a bad comedy series.

Jess and I are sitting on the couch watching a movie, after enjoying a lovely dinner. It had been raining out for a good 20 minutes, and I mean raining hard. All of the sudden, I feel a drop on my head. Then another. And another. I look up and the ceiling in the living room is leaking. This happened last fall, so at least we knew what to do. I yell to Jess to go get a bucket as I try and catch what I can in a towel. She goes into the basement and all I hear is, “Honey! We have a flood down here!” We normally get a wee bit of water in the basement when it rains really hard, so this is what I was expecting. Well, I was wrong. We had about 4 inches of water and it was rising fast. I grabbed my big maglight and found where it was coming in. It was coming in so fast the water we bubbling and gurgling like it was coming from a garden hose. Never good. But, we still had to deal with the living room. We grab what we can and run back upstairs. We move the couch to the other side of the room and lay out a bucket, a pot, and towels to catch the 4 leaks that have now popped up. I tell Jess that I am going to check upstairs and that she should start grabbing every pot she can find. So, I make my way into our rafters where all of our storage space is and it’s a complete disaster. At first glance, there are about a dozen or so leaks, ranging from drip-drip to “shut off the damn hose!”. We quickly run out of recepticles, and Jess makes an emergency run to my Nanny’s basement where there are more buckets. She comes back with 2 more buckets and tells me she has water is her always dry basement. Ok, this is where I make an S.O.S. call (Save Our Shit) I call to my parent’s house and tell my mom the situation very quickly. She says that she will gather what she can and have my dad run them up A.S.A.P. Jess and I go back to my Nanny’s basement and try and find the source of her water. While we are in there, we hear my dad pull up and enter our house. His first concern was our basement. It had only been about 10 minutes since we were last down there, but the water had spread about another 3 feet and gotten about 2 inches deeper. I show him where the source is, and he does not look happy. He throws the garage door open and looks outside at the source. Quickly, he grabs one of my shovels and starts to dig. I ask him what he is doing and he says he’s making a temporary drainage ditch. I grab a shovel and quickly follow pace. So here we are Jess upstairs catching water in buckets and bowls, and my dad and I out in the pounding rain digging a ditch to make the water flow away from the house. I couldn’t even begin to make this shit up. This is the kind of life a lead.

Needless to say, we got just about everything taken care of, including a little belly-crawling through the rafters by yours truly to get 3 last leaks. After that, she went right to bed. I played Guild Wars for about an hour, and then passed out myself. What a night…

Is this sexy or just creepy?