I’ve gotten vehicles stuck before (986 w/2 wagons cutting across a soft spot, Dakota hung up on snow, ATV high centered on the frame, ATC in a creek bottom), but nothing like this or this.

I think these photos show pretty clearly why $5 powerstrips are best left at the store. Please, for the safety of your house, buy a brand name. (I prefer APC.)

I wonder if my balljoints were made “at a plant in Indiana“.

Campus Poker Club, and a nice letter from UI Legal shooting down their tourney.

When my parents got their new house, it included a dishwasher, leaving an extra dishwasher from the old house. Since almost anything has to be quieter than the dishwasher we currently have, my parents brought it down last Sunday. With about 20 minutes of effort, I pulled the old dishwasher by myself.

After looking realizing that the existing fitting on the new and old dishwashers were different, and that someone had overtightened the correct fitting, we made a trip to Lowes and picked up a new elbow. We also grabbed lunch at Ruby Tuesdays while we were out.
Upon returning home, I finished up the install after about another 30 minutes.

We haven’t run it yet, but the hot water fitting hasn’t leaked so far.

And Alisha put up the Christmas tree on Sunday.

(More pictures)

What a collection of cars. (Via Jalopnik)

Clean System to Zombie Bot in 4 minutes. Damn, that’s quick. And people wonder why I’m paranoid.

After reading a short entry from Glenn Reynolds about Wal-Mart, I hit the two links and did some reading.
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE would like us to think that because the economy is improving, people are shunning Wal-Mart because of the lower priced, and therefore lower quality, goods that are sold there. Consumers choose to pay slightly more for brands with more name recognition.
The second goes down another track and claims that the shopping experience in general just sucks at Wal-Mart:

I can accept that, but Wal-Mart starts to lose the battle when Target clearly goes out of its way to maintain wide aisles, a slightly more upscale selection of merchandise and a store that’s not downright filthy six days out of seven. Maybe Wal-Marts outside of the Southeast are clean and neat, but I’ve yet to see a store stay clean and pleasant for more than six months after its opening. Those of us with the option don’t want to shop at Wal-Mart; not out of opposition to red state values or capitalism. We shop at Target because our feet don’t stick to the floor while walking down the frozen food aisle.

I’d agree with the second one, but I think they are both missing an underlying factor: Wal-Mart employees have no motivation to do a good job, their compensation and benefits suck. CostCo, for example, has better employee retention numbers and better starting salaries, according to this article. Contrast that with some of the reports about Wal-Mart’s wonderful employment record.
If you know you are just an easily replaced cog in the giant machine, why try to do anymore than just what is necessary to get by? Maybe this will encourage Wal-Mart to put employee well-being ahead of stock holders value and corporate profits in the race for the the all-mighty dollar.
Update: My stylesheet still makes quotes look like crap, gotta get that fixed.

Is this thing on?

Yes, I’ve had the blog for a year now, and contrary to my own predictions, it isn’t neglected or dead.

I’ve got pictures and stories to post about tearing into my parents old house and the Windows NT4 to 2003 Active Directory upgrade at work, but I really don’t feel like writing up either of them right now.