the Zipper

Took the kids to the festival on Saturday. They were excited to go on the Zipper. The picture below turned out alright considering the clouds came rolling in and it was dusk. That's them in the cart on the end. I think being at the end or top of the Zipper is the best part of the ride.....

Look at me talk as if I went on the Zipper. I didn't go on at all. I use to love it. But now the ride looks old and shaky . Like it is put together with sticks and string. And the noises that thing makes. Like it's crying out in pain. I don't even really like the kids going on it, but they begged and pleaded, they made promises about chores and school work. So of I caved in, knowing the promises will last all of 2 days. I'll take what I can get.

Harley

This is my friend Harley, he likes to spend his afternoons at the ballpark watching the kids play baseball. He was nice enough to let me take his picture.

These are so much fun! Gaming consoles have come a long way and aren't just for playing video games. When its raining our gaming console provides plenty of interactive entertainment. For example:



Basically Singstar turns your PS3 or PS2 into a karaoke machine and the playlist features all the original videos. Or if your brave you can set up your EyeToy and watch yourself sing. Amanda is the singing queen around here. She's fun to battle with, even if she does always win. My voice is terrible and there should be a law against me singing. We all have out favorite songs on the list. I like to belt out Gwen Stefani's "Cool" and Rolling Stone's "Paint it Black" while Jim likes The Killer's "Somebody Told Me" and Offspring's "Self Esteem".

The playlist of songs:

Gwen Stefani Cool
Heavans Devils Dangerous and on the run
The Killers Somebody Told Me
Coldplay Speed Of Sound
KT Tunstall Black Horse And The Cherry Tree
Jordan Powell Don't Stop Me Now
Elton John Rocket Man
Keane Everybody's Changing
Marvin Gaye I Heard It Through The Grapevine
The Cure Friday I'm In Love
D.J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince Summertime
The White Stripes Blue Orchid
Naked Eyes (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me
B-52's Love Shack
Dusty Springfield Son Of A Preacher Man
Joss Stone Super Duper Love (Are You Diggin On Me?)
Blur Song 2
Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive
Jet Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
Hole Celebrity Skin
Thin Lizzy The Boys Are Back in Town
Scissor Sisters Take Your Mama Out
The Rolling Stones Paint It, Black
Bloc Party Banquet
The Police Every Breath You Take
The Offspring Self Esteem
Lynyrd Skynyrd Sweet Home Alabama
Scorpions Winds Of Change
Good Charlotte Girls & Boys
The Hives Hate To Say I Told You SO

NEXT:



Dance Dance Revolution Super Nova. This is one where we dance, it comes with one dance pad and we had to by a second one so we can compete. Cuz that's the whole fun of it. This is addicting and best of all there is also a workout mode. You can also dance and compete with people online and as with Singstar Rocks, you can hook up the EyeToy to this.

Playlist:
Battle Without Honor Or Humanity - By Tomoyasu Hotei
Centerfold(130 BPM move it remix) - By Captain Jack
Come Clean - By NM featuring Susan Z
Curus - By D-crew
Dance, Dance - By Fall Out Boy
Do You Want To - By Franz Ferdinand
Doll - By ÇsðüÇqÇ`
Flow (True Style) - By Scotty D. revisits U1
Fly away - By ChiyoTia
Freckles (KCP Re-Edit) - By Tiggy
Funkytown - By Lipps's, Inc
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - By Cyndi Lauper
Heaven is a Place on Earth (German Election Mix) - By Julia
Hit 'n' Slap - By Asletics
Jerk it Out - By Caesars
L.E.F. (Loud Electronic Ferocious) - By Ferry Corsten
Let's Dance - By David Bowie
Mr. Dabada (Groove Wonder Remix) - By Carlos Jean
Mugen - By ÇsðüÇqÇ`
My Only Shining Star - By Naoki feat. Becky Lucinda
No.13 - By Taka
respect for J.S.B Peace(^^)v - By BeForU
Robogirl - By The Crystal Method
Shivers(Radio Edit) - By Armin van Buuren
Shout - By Lulu
Since U Been Gone - By Kelly Clarkson
Star Gate Heaven - By SySF. feat. Donna Burke
The Other Side(radio mix) - By Paul van Dyk feat. Wayne Johnson
True Love - By Jun
Turn On the Music(Axwell Radio Edit) - By Roger Sanchez
Video Killed The Radio Star - By The Buggles
Xepher - By Tatsh


Also:
Guitar Hero 2



This game will make you feel like a rockstar no matter who you are!
The Guitar Hero 2 playlist

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Anyway.........
This last weekend I didn't do anything that I had planned. Ever have a weekend like that? So here's what I didn't do, Cortney had a softball game and that was cancelled and after that I had planned to attend a peace rally downtown but developed a headache that stayed with me all weekend. So I didn't go to the peace rally. On Sunday, I was suppose to play tennis with Amanda, but again the headache. Jim wanted to take everyone to the baseball field and play some ball, but Roo wanted to ride his dirt bike instead and flaked out. Roo! And without calling!

I did get a chance to check out the farmers market and stayed for 3 minutes. It's just not time, no one had anything interesting for sale. There was a guy selling homemade honey and beeswax candles, but I already have enough honey. Ya know, I saw this lady that was totally macking on the old guy selling the honey. Just outragously flirting.

I don't like your girlfriend

Hey! Hey! You! You!
I don't like your girlfriend!
No way! No way!
I think you need a new one
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I could be your girlfriend

Somehow I drifted off my regular radio station and found myself dancing and singing to that dumb "Girlfriend" song by Avril Lavigne, and I was liking it! When I see these lyrics written without the music I find them obnoxious. But put music with them and its fun to sing.
The video. She looks great in the video, but I hate the video because its so fucking annoying. If she does get that guy in the end he'll be sorry because she is a 'bossy bitch', but then again I like that. So now you can see that this song has turned me into a walking contradiction.
"Girlfriend" video.

...somebody get me a spoon so I can gag myself.

Yeah this post is immature...I'll shut up now.
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Last night we waited and waited (20 min.) to be seated at Shari's Restaurant. I became so bored I took a photo of the 'Please Wait To Be Seated" sign.


We go to Shari's because it's free for kids on weekends. I'm cheap. Seriously, look what we got for free.



Way better looking than the pancakes I posted last week.




LINKS:
My journal almost a year ago

10 Tips For The Lazy Environmentalist

Blue-ray Laser Shortage Ending; Could Lead To PS3 Price Cuts

What Does $456 Billion Buy?

TWiT 96: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 58 D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter

Among some of my favorite software is DVD Dycrypter and DVD Shrink. I've been using these programs for well over a year now and best of all they are FREE.

I generally use DVD Decrypter because I prefer its interface and overall speed, however this week I began to play around with DVDFab, and I really like what I'm seeing. Easy to use. Okay, back on track......
Awhile back, DVD Decrypter's official download site had been removed due to legalities. Even though it's been shut down a person can easily download the program from mirror sites. Like here.

I downloaded these programs with the intention of renting movies and burning them. DVD Decrypter rips encrypted dvd video files onto your harddrive for further processing and removes region code protection. The DVD Shrink can do some of that but is mainly used to compress my data (movie) so it will fit back onto a standard DVD-R as the files would otherwise be too big. The results were great, but is it legal? That's the question here.

I did some research last month and found some conflicting sides to this and here is what I found, manufacturers state that making copies for any purpose is illegal because to do so is a copyright infringement. But there is also the Fair Use Act and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 which seems most of the public is in favor of. This states that you may legally make a copy of your DVD/CD for personal backup if you were the one who bought (and still own) the original.

So renting and copying is probably illegal *sigh* and backing up DVD's that I already own is legal. Backing up DVD's isn't a bad idea, my kids have scratched alot of movies and it's been nice having a master copy for when this happens.

I still have a few previous copies of rented movies, so I guess when I see men in suits by my door I better hide and bury all copies of "Charlotte's Web" and "Ice Age" in the backyard along with the buried treasure and bodies I have hidden back there.

How to Rip DVDs

DVD Shrink Guide (this one got me started a year ago)

Side note:
I forgot to mention that DVD Shrink can't rip Sony movies. I think DVDFab
does, but I haven't tried it. Another thing about DVDFab is the newest version can decrypt HD DVD and Blue-ray movies. I have a PS3 that plays Blue-ray, so I'm kind of curious to how that works. Maybe that can be next week's project.

Amy

Check out these two sites
Doom9
Afterdawn.com (great site!)

We all scream for ice cream!

Hey if you are looking for a sweet deal, tonight Baskin and Robbins is having 31 cent scoop night from 5-10PM. This is in honor of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. Baskin Robbins is donating $100,000 to the foundation.

Rasberry Swirl here I come!

Stuff thats going on:



Lots of baseball stuff. Yesterday the munchkin had a game and hit the ball 4x, all singles and came in for a score everytime.She's pretty dramatic about it though. Everytime shes on deck, she waits until after her 2nd strike to hit the ball. The suspense!

Later on we all played baseball at another field, just goofing around. I hit the ball backwards over the backstop and onto a busy street, oops.



Also lately we have been eating healthier. So yesterday I made some healthy oat bran pancakes. Then I thought they would be really good with pre-sweetened strawberries and I thawed out some frozen ones. Then one of the kids got out the whip cream.



They didn't look very healthy anymore. Somewhere under all of that is the healthy oat bran pancakes.







Hmm what else? Oh, remember the freaking car alarm fiasco on Easter? Well we had finally decided to just have the car towed back here (50 dollars), and the very next morning Jim figured it out. It was something really stupid. BUT, the car is in motion and running again, that's the important thing.











Other things:







I still haven't found my wedding ring and I lost an expensive money order. Today I refinished an old shelf that really need it, after that we totally spring cleaned, windows, shampood carpets, the works and I still didn't find the ring or the money order but the place looks fantastic.(On the inside). The outside is mowed and cleaned up, but still ugly and I hate the outside of this place with a thousand flames of passion!







Some good stuff:



A few days ago I joined a tennis club, really looking forward to that. They just raised $23, 231 and counting towards new tennis courts.



I'm throwing around the idea of getting a job outside the house.



I finally beat Marvel's Ultimate Alliance.

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LINKS:



72% of Troops Want Out of Iraq, 29% Now!



Google scrambles to restore deleted homepages



Why are there so few women on digg?