Scott McLaughlin

This makes my freakin day. Get the )(@&*#)$ Out. Although now that I posted that the Scientoligists will start hacking my web site to remove it. I’m probably on their hit list now.

Ethan starts his mountain climbing class tomorrow. He’s very excited, we’ll see how it goes. He’s convinced he’s climbing to the top the first day. I’ll be sure to take some pictures either way. He finished up swimming lessons this round. He’ll go back in July or so when Keira starts going. She’s going after she turns 3 (holy shit thats in like 2 weeks. 6/11).

Should be a busy weekend if its nice out. Need to get working on the fence tear out and replacement. As you can see its totally rotted. I’ve torn about 1/2 of it out, need to haul the wood off to H&H recycling. I think I’m going to have to remove some concreted posts though. Damn was hoping to avoid that. Oh well, just more labor. Also need to repair the sprinkler system main water feed. Over the winter one of the main feed valves froze and busted…god damn plastic, i knew i should have made that one metal. So I need to tear that out and replace it all since I can’t run any of the system (drip or sprinklers). Aaah houses…so much work. And WTF I’m trying to buy two more. Some people never learn.

Had a kick ass weekend over Memorial Day down in Myrtle Point at the Culbertson family cemetary. As some of you may know we go down every year to the event where they clean it all up and put out new flowers. Got to burn up the acreage on the four wheeler with the kids and have a good time. Its such a beautiful piece of land, and due to this years floods its overly green right now, which is cool. (FYI this is the same land we go down to hunt on every year. Several hundred acres owned by the family.

Good bye to my good friend Steve who is headed back to Iraq this week for a few month stint. Take care my friend and dodge the bullets. Keep us updated on your life via your blog and we’ll see you soon. Oh and hurry up and sell me your Jeep.

Proof of one of my many reasons for hating social networking sites, especially twitter. This is exactly why they are moronic.

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5261286/todays-twitter-hysteria-says-patrick-swayze-has-died-he-didnt

I will say I’m somewhat hypocritical in the fact that I have a facebook account I rarely use or read (mostly only to send private emails to a couple friends for 20 years ago who can’t seem to use my real email address for some reason) and I do have a twitter account. On twitter nobody follows me (and I post no updates) and I only follow the white house. Its the only way to get an RSS feed from the whitehouse to my blackberry. Now that we have an administration who gives a shit about updating the citizens I tend to read it regularly.

I will not continue on with my social networking site rant anymore, but the above link shows why I hate Twitter so much, its the new “whats wrong with America”.

Damn I’m worn out today. Worked a stupid work maintenance window until after 4am this morning. Then it was up at 7:30 when Michelle left since the kids were up. Didn’t get anything done i was so tired. Watched a ton of movies. The Roku box now supports Amazon.com video streaming which has tens of thousands of titles recorded. Tons of them in HD. So if I can’t find it on Netflix or Hulu I can now find it on Amazon. Media is dead. Although I still buy the occasional BluRay.

We need a new hot tub, I decided that today. I’m gonna start putting those motions in place. I’ve really missed it since the last one. No idea what they cost these days. I’m a huge fan of Artic Spa’s…they are the best. If we ever et the beach place done, I want to put one there too. I’ll have to wonder down to the local dealer see what kind of smokin deals they got. Well that and convincing the wife why we need it LOL. I have the fence torn out right to replace it (something I didn’t work on today and should have) so it’s a good time to put one in since I could actually get it into the yard.
Well maybe tomorrow I can get some work done on the fence, still need to complete tear out, then remove a couple posts that have to be replaced (OMG PITA). Then rebuild the frame and planks back onto the existing posts. Going to make it six feet tall this time as opposed to the 5′ it is now, bit more privacy.
My good friend Steve’s heading back to Iraq again. Sad to see him go, hopefully it will be the last time. This time it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. They only have a 5 month contract left so shouldn’t be there long. Good luck to you Steve, be safe!

Monday night is an ARES/RACES Ham radio exercise. This spring’s exercise we are going to simulate a Mount St. Helens eruption. Should be cool. I’m suppose to meet with my mobile gear at a place on the east side. It will be interesting since I’ve never been through one yet. If you have a HAM radio you should scan the 2m and 70cm local repeaters that night you should be able to hear it going on. Starts around 7pm Monday night.

Spent the weekend up on the coast in Ocean Park. We have a 1/2 acre of property up there we’ve been working on with my friend Matt for awhile trying to get a place built. The kids were dying to go to the beach so we figured we’d head up for the weekend stay in a nice beach side cottage and have some fun. Also gave me a chance to check on the lot.

We recently had the septic put in, lot cleared and leveled, so I wanted to check all that out. The pictures I took of the lot Saturday are right here. We need to get the house done, I worry a lot about the septic being there as its easy for someone to be a dick and vandalize it. As you can see the pump control box sits out in the open. I put a padlock on it this weekend to at least keep the nosey boners out of it. Would be easy to damage the tanks though by throwing shit into them. If I had an internet feed to the lot already I’d slap up an Axis video camera and record it to my server back at home…wish I knew someone at Centurytel that could hook me up before we have the house in place. All thats left now is electrical and the house itself.

If anyone wants the lot next to mine it just went up for sale. Price seems high at $58k, especially for now, so i’m sure it could be low balled. Although if it truly is worth that price than our place is worth a fortune since we are twice the size and have water and septic and clearing done. The lot next to us is 60×120 or so with nothing done to it. I _REALLY_ want to buy it just so nobody can build there and I’d be getting us to almost a full acre. So one of you rich bastards buy it for me.

The trip was blast, used the brand new Canon camera to take some HD video, man it takes great video, as well as a whole slew of pictures. Pretty impressive camera, especially for the money. Although I’m a fuck knob and got sand in the slide out lens so its jammed now…that will be a blast to fix.

The kids had so much fun. We got one nice day of sunshine, it was windy and that made the air a bit cold, like the kids care. They were in the ocean soaking wet than covered with sand in a matter of 15 minutes. Keira was shivering but didn’t want to go back to the house. You can see some of the water fun in the videos.

Well off to bed I suppose, headed back home tomorrow to go back to the routine.