back in the saddle again

I think we got the technical issues worked out. we'll get some blogs on this birch now!

Oopsie

Back in Feb '05, we put a bunch of our crap in storage, moved to VA for my job and rented our house out. We came back later that year, and decided we were going to sell our house and buy or build a new one, so we left most of our crap in storage. In December of '06, our storage unit got broken into. They cut the lock off and stole about $3k worth of stuff, mostly CD's and DVD's, but they also got a hi-lift jack, surround sound speakers, a couple of leather jackets and a dvd player. Our policy covered Replacement cost, but only if we actually replaced the stuff. After deductible and depreciation, without replacing anything, we got about $1500. The most important thing that was stolen were the CD's and DVD's, and luckily, a few months before the theft, I hiad ripped all of our CD's to MP3 for our MP3 players, so we've still got most of that music. The DVD's are gone forever, but most of them we probably wouldn't watch much anyway, and the others would likely soon have to be replaced by HDDVD or Blu-Ray.

This month, we just moved into the house that we built and started unpacking stuff. We found all of the stuff that we thought was stolen!

Just kidding, but we did find the DVD player, oops. I guess it was in a different box than we thought it was.

Motorcycling

had a long motorcycling blog typed, and IE horked on me. Here's the gist of it:

Motorcycling is fun, you should try it. I've been riding about 4.5 years and love it. I'm into all kinds of bikes, not just the cruiser style that I own. I really dig older bikes (30+ years). I currently have an '03 Yamaha V-Star 1100 Classic and a '78 Honda CB550. I'd like to have an old Harley (Shovelhead or older) and an old British bike (Triumph, Norton, BSA, etc.).

Also, people that buy motorcycles and NEVER ride them are morons and posers. I once worked for a guy that had 3 brand new Harley's and never rode one of them once. As of last year, he'd had the oldest one for 3 years and never ridden it, and bought 2 more after that. I also knew a guy that trailered his bike from Ellettsville to Springville for the Boogie. That's about a 30 minute ride, and he pulled it there on a trailer.

I'm not an iron butt champion by any means, but I much prefer riding to driving. However, I prefer staying dry to getting wet, so if the rain forecast is 50% or higher, I'll probably be caging.

If you're interested in learning to ride, I highly suggest ABATE. They have a great beginner's course, that also reduces your insurance rates.

Talent

So I watched the finale of "America's Got Talent" last night. It was drawn out and the Hoff performed some gay song. In the end, Cas Heley didn't win, he came in second. The guy that won, Terry Fator, deserved it though, I think. I've never been a real ventriloquist fan, but this guy is pretty good. Not only is he a ventriloquist, but his dummies sing, and do impressions, and they're dead on.

Also, they showed recaps of a lot of the tryouts, and those are the best part of shows like that, the crazy ass people that try out for them. I just can't believe something like "Boy Shakira" made it through not only the tryouts but like 3 rounds...wtf?

Damn You ScubaSteve!

I figure I'd better explain the nom du blog...

In case you've been in a cave, Scuba Steve was the kid's Action Figure in the Adam Sandler flick "Big Daddy". Junior year of college, my buddy Greg's girlfriend started calling me that because there were 4 Steves in the fraternity, so she had to figure out a way to tell us apart, and that's the handle that got stuck on me.

Fast forward 2 years to my first real job, working for the man. This dickweed that I work with has a habit of giving everybody nicknames. Seriously, he's a great guy, and we're good buddies, but he DOES give EVERYBODY a nickname of some sort. He picked up on the "Big Daddy" reference without any prompting, and when I mentioned someone else coming up with that, it stuck. Over the last 5 years it got shortened to "Scoob"... what the hell, i've GIVEN worse nicknames, right Skippy?

Confession

i have a confession to make. i can't get enough of "America's Got Talent". I'm watching i right now, and i have a man-crush on Cas Haley. That mother can sing, and he has such a unique voice.

Anyway, I've convinced myself that this show is infinitely better than "American Idol" because these people aren't pop singers (not all of them), and there are some amazing talents on the show. Terry Fator, the ventriloquist is just badass. that is all