Often times I don’t even think to type even the randomest of blurbs here.
March 16th was Slayton’s eighth birthday. On the day before we convinced him that we had a fun day planned for him…of furniture shopping. For a couple weeks before hand, we got him all riled up, telling him all about the entertainment centers and end tables we wished to purchase.
Needless to say he was getting quite upset.
So on the 15th we all piled in the car. The boys brought their Game Boys. Kept their attention away from possible spoilers.
Finally, two hours later, pulled into the parking lot of FunSpot. He didn’t even notice. When he did, he couldn’t stop jumping up and down.
Joining us was our good friends, the Picards, and Slayton’s best friend Quentin. They played a lot of Skee-Ball and gave all the tickets to Slayton.
This whole list is terribly out-of-date. Don’t rely on it.
24 Season 1
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
American Outlaws
American Pie Ultimate Unrated Edition
Angel Season 1
Angel Season 2
Angel Season 3
Angel Season 4
Angel Season 5
Animatrix
At First Sight
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Basic Instinct
Batman (Michael Keaton)
Beautiful Mind, A
Bedazzled
Big Daddy
Big Trouble in Little China
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
Black Beauty
Blade
Blade Runner (Directors Cut)
Braveheart
Bruce Almighty
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7
Cast Away
Clerks
Collateral Damage
Contact
Copycat
Core, The
Corruptor, The
Coyote Ugly
Craft, The
Critters
Cutting Edge
Dark Angel, Season 1
Dark Angel, Season 2
Dark City
Dave
Dawn of the Dead (Unrated Directors Cut)
Demolition Man
Devil’s Advocate
Dogma (Special Edition)
Don’t Say A Word
Double Jeopardy
Entrapment
Ever After
Fast and the Furious, The
Fear Dot Com
Fight Club
Firefly (Joss Whedon)
Firefox
Forrest Gump (Special Collectors Edition)
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Frequency
From Dusk ’til Dawn
From Dusk ’til Dawn (Collectors Series)
Gladiator (Signature Selection)
Going Overboard (Adam Sandler)
Gone in 60 Seconds (2002)
Goodfellas
Green Mile, The
Groundhog Day (Special Edition)
Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone
Heat
Highlander (10th Anniversary, Directors Cut)
Hitch
Innocent Blood
Iron Giant, The
Judgement Night
King Arthur (Directors Cut)
King of Queens, Season 1
King of Queens, Season 2
King of Queens, Season 3
King of Queens, Season 4
Last Boy Scout, The
Legally Blonde
Lethal Weapon 2
Lethal Weapon 3
Lethal Weapon 4
Liar Liar
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lost Boys, The
Lost In Space
Man from Snowy River, The
Martial Arts Masters (Three Disc Set)
Matrix Reloaded
Matrix Revolutions
Matrix, The
Medallion, The
Men In Black
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Mod Squad, The
Monsters, Inc
Mummy, The (Ultimate Edition)
Murder at 1600
Murder by Numbers
Mystic Pizza
Negotiator, The
Neverending Story, The
Night of the Living Dead (1966)
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Nine Months
Ninth Gate, The
Notting Hill
Office Space
Others, The (Collectors Edition)
Outbreak
Pale Rider (Clint Eastwood)
Pay It Forward
Pearl Harbor (60th Anniversary Edition)
Pleasantville
Point of No Return
Pretty Woman (10th Anniversary Edition)
Pulp Fiction
Red Dragon (Anthony Hopkins)
Reservoir Dogs
Resident Evil
Rock, The
Rush Hour
S1M0NE
Saint, The
Samurai Jack, The Premiere Movie
Scream
Serendipity
Serenity (Joss Whedon)
Shawshank Redemption, The
Signs (M. Night Shyamalan)
Silence of the Lambs (Special Edition)
Six Days, Seven Nights
Sixteen Candles
Sixth Sense, The
Sleeping with the Enemy
Sleepless in Seattle
Sleepwalkers
Solaris
Space Cowboys
Spawn
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Stargate (original flip-disc version)
Stepmom
Stir of Echos
Super Troopers
Terminator 2 (Ultimate Edition)
Thin Red Line, The
Time Machine (2002)
Time to Kill, A
Top Gun
Total Recall
True Lies
Truth About Cats and Dogs, The
UHF (Weird Al Yankovic)
Underworld
Volcano
Wedding Singer, The
X-Men
X2: X-Men United
You’ve Got Mail
Young Guns
Young Guns II
Ξ November 22nd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |
Excellent write-up. Going to try this today.
NY Times Link
It’s 6:41am, and we’re getting Slayton ready for his first Cub Scout outing. A Chuck Wagon Derby, held in Jacksonville, VT.
He hasn’t even had a pack/den meeting yet. So today @ 6:00am we put him in his uniform for the first time.
As you can see from this picture, he’s lost yet another front tooth. This one came out at school.
Apologies for the lack of updates. The site has been down since September. The server that hosts it was hacked and had to be rebuilt.
I still continue to feel generally miserable, though I have periods of time where I feel good. I had a period of five minutes - five whole minutes! - about a week ago where I actually felt 100%. It came on suddenly, and just as I realized “hey, I actually feel good right now!” the good feeling started sliding backwards.
Frankly, I just want to know what the pain in my upper left abdomen is. I had it before taking the Cipro, and I’ve got it now. I’ve seen a gastro doc, who performed some tests (that I won’t get into) who couldn’t find anything wrong.
Ξ September 3rd, 2007 | → Comments Off | ∇ Family |
Ξ July 26th, 2007 | → Comments Off | ∇ Family |
Ten minutes ago, Slayton finally had me pull out his loose upper tooth. It’s been loose for over a month.
Tonight we were eating corn-on-the-cob and he was having such a hard time with it. Sarah and I convinced him to just get it over with.
Pictures forthcoming.
For nearly two months now I’ve been plagued with a variety of health issues, with little to no relief. I’ve seen a couple doctors now, and so far nothing seems to have come from it.
I started having this dull ache in my left side, under the rib cage. Went to my GP, she ordered a chest xray, saw nothing, told me it would likely pass.
Week goes by, now I’m having what I can only describe is a ‘cramping’ sensation in the same area. Go back to the Dr, she says it’s likely musculo-skeletal, and to take Aleve, it’ll likely pass on it’s own.
About another week passes, and during that time I start having a pain in my back, ribcage level, on the left. Heavyness in my pelvis. Peeing all the time. My Dr is on vacation, hey…time for a second opinion. He diagnoses ‘prostatitis’ puts me on antibiotics (Doxycycline).
It seems to be working - kinda - on my pelvis discomfort, but the pain in my back is getting worse. Plus the medication is having some really screwy side-effects. I’m having chest pains, and I’m massively photosensitive. I see the ER doctor, he says I’m having a reaction to the antibiotic (well, duh) and gives me a new one, Cipro. Doesn’t answer the questions about my back, and sends me on my way.
Been on this new stuff for nearly a week now, and though I’m no longer photosensitive and having chest pains, the heavy pelvis sensation returned with a vengeance a couple days ago. The back pain seems to be subsiding a bit, but now I have an itch under my arm that I can’t scratch, that wraps around to my back ribcage.
And the cramping sensation, which never completely went away, came back with a vengeance a couple days ago. It comes and goes, but when it’s there it’s a fairly disturbing feeling. It’s like eating a meal and going for a run and getting cramps, without running.
I’m really worried about this “cramping” sensation. Doctors don’t seem to be worried, but they don’t have to LIVE in my body, do they?
As such, I’ve been horribly depressed. I don’t WANT to be. But I can’t help thinking that it’s something very bad.
I’ve started a new forum on this site. It’s for things and places that I’ve had interest in over the years.
This is the direct link: http://www.pealefamily.net/forum
Ξ March 16th, 2007 | → Comments Off | ∇ Family, Website |
Downloaded this new theme. Hated the old one. What does everyone think?
Remarkably it was his front lower instead of his front upper.
It’s been loose for days. Convinced him last night to do the string-around-the-tooth yank it out thing.
Thought it would pop right out…nope…did loosen it right up, though. Wouldn’t let me touch it after that.
This morning he wanted to try again. Tied the string around the root this time (since it was accessible). I said “you really want me to do this?” and I could see by the look on his face he was having second thoughts, and was about to back away, so before he could think about it I pulled it out.
He didn’t feel a thing. Tooth went flying. Then when the realization hit him what happened the tears started flowing. He got over it about ten seconds later when I handed him his tooth.
The other night we bought ice cream for desert, along with cones as a special treat.
Turn to Slayton and say “If you finish your dinner you can have an ice cream cone afterwards.”
His eyes get big as saucers. “Really? Can I have ice cream in it?”
Ξ August 12th, 2006 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Life |
My motherboard has been flakey as heck lately, what with random shutdowns. Was kind of mystified by it all until I started having problems with my USB. It was then that I figured out I was having power problems.
Pulled the power connector off the motherboard. Hm…doesn’t want to come out…Gr…ah, there we go. Ah, now I see why! It’s all melty. Just on the +5V lines.
Crap, can’t do anything about it right now. Let’s just jam it back on there…hope it holds on a bit longer.
Lasted maybe a month, then the restarts and USB problems started again. Ah, nuts.
Kept reseating it. The uptime kept getting smaller and smaller. Finally it would be up maybe a couple minutes. If I was lucky. It would even reboot on the BIOS screen.
“Crap,” said I. “This won’t do.” friend of mine, Paul, sold me a board a couple years back. Pop it in. Haven’t hooked up the drives yet. It fires right up. “Cool,” says I. I turn the computer off, turn away, then turn back. The computer is back on. “Huh?” I exclaim, as I smell it: magic blue smoke. NO!
I have no idea what happened. Suck. The board is dead. Now I’m down two boards.
So on Friday my co-worker Andy finds an old HP on the side of the road. Old old, like 333MHz or something. I ask that if it’s DOA can I have the motherboard so I can rape it for the ATX connector. He says sure.
Cracks it open…no hard drive. “Heck,” says he. “I’m not going to bother with this. You want it, it’s yours.” Hands me the motherboard, and proceeds to rape the case of all screws and fans.
I start to unsolder the ATX connector. It’s *slow* going. “Want a hint?” says Cool Guy, pulling out his propane torch. Why not? Not like we’re going to use this board again, anyway!
Connector comes off in about six seconds. We proceed to burn the heck out of the board and pull everything off it. Fun!
So tonight, with great trepadation I take my precious and carefully remove the old connector. I could care less about the connector itself, but unsoldering all 24 pins cleanly is proving a real bitch. Finally I realize I’ll never be able to remove all the old solder without putting on *more* solder. Once I do that, it pops right off.
Solder on the new connector. It’s thru-hole soldering, which means that not only are connections made on both sides of the board, they’re made *inside* it as well.
I finish, so I install it in the case. Don’t hook *anything* up. It’s either going to work the first time, it won’t work at all, or it’ll release more magic blue smoke.
Plug it in…whoops…forgot to turn off the power supply…but wait…motherboard light is glowing…that’s a good sign.
Fire it up…hey, it’s working! Go into the BIOS and check voltage levels. Everything was *very* low before, esp. +5V. Now everything is 5×5. SWEET.
Typing on it now. Have Asus PC Probe running, taking polls of the system every five seconds, so if it hiccups I’ll know about it.
While I was at it, the CPU fan had quit a while back. It was fine when I hooked it to another one of the fan plugs, so I knew it wasn’t the fan itself.
Examined the surrounding circuitry…hm…there’s an electrolytic cap right in it’s path. I know I’ve got replacements, let’s give it a shot.
Crap, I hate thru-hole soldering. I can clearly see one pad just fine. The other side has none on either side. Hope this works…
Hey, my fan is spinning! Full speed! All right!
*pats himself on the back*
I admit, it’s just his name, but for a three and a half year old with disabilities, I am seriously impressed.
Came home today, Sarah has the Magna-Doodle. She says “you’ll never believe what your son did today, by himself, with no help.” she turns it around so I can see the face, and sure enough, there’s his name in black and white!
I actually have a picture of it, but I can’t find the cable that goes to the camera for some reason, so I’ll have to post it later.
Sarah’s account, want to know how it shows up.
Now running Wordpress 2.0.2, and hopefully the end of being cracked.
To my friendly crackers: come one guys, give me a break here, huh? Try to crack something someone WANTS to see cracked. Like NAMBLA or something.
Ξ March 26th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ Life |
Not sure why my first post didn’t show up, it’s in the database…let’s try again.
Friday I got to see Kiki’s first steps! She stood up, and I held my hands out to her, and she walked right to me!
Sarah, regretably missed this because she was talking about that American Idol guy, Ace. 
She’s excused; she spent the morning and part of the afternoon in the ER. Two weeks ago she went with massive abdominal pain. Thinking “appendix” I raced to the ER to meet her. Diagnosed her with a 4mm kidney stone. Youch!
So Friday she gets similar pain, goes back to the ER. Stone is bigger than they thought, at least 5mm. So she has to have surgery to remove it. That sucks.
The boys seem to be doing well. Riley’s speech improves by the week. We just had a parent/teacher conference about Slayton, and he seems to be doing *very* well in school. He picked out a new book, a chapter book, at a library clearance. Unbelievable that not only does he read it, but comprehends. That’s my boy!
At work, back in September/October I moved pretty much our entire stock of coin-op equipment from one location in the warehouse to another, to accomodate a new company that was moving in. Come to find out they *really* need the warehouse space the games are in, so we’re being moved to the basement. Which means I get to move everything. Again. This time I can’t do it alone, as the boss won’t let me drive the truck. Yep! This time, everything has to be moved by truck, around to the back of the warehouse. Last time I had it easy, and it was all wheeled across the floor.
The best part is, it’s not even in it’s final resting place. It’s being put just *outside* where our new shop will be. So after it’s moved, and our shop is finished, we get to move it yet AGAIN into our new shop. 
I did get one thing out of all these moves, though. Xenophobe is a game I played a lot when I was a kid. Found a cabinet for one that had been converted years ago. Then I was lucky enough to find not only the boardset in our pile of boards, but the control panel, marquee. I’ll be putting a progress report on my projects page shortly, but for now I have a Project Announcement over @ ArcadeControls.
Site was cracked *again*. Have to get some more security measures on the site. PITA!
On another note, a couple years back I lost a bunch of family photos on a crashed hard drive. Needless to say, we were pretty upset.
Good news is I managed to recover them last night! Found a nifty program that allowed me to retrieve all my data!
So interesting to see those old pictures again. I’ll have to see what I can do to post them in the Gallery.
I updated the DVD List to show what I have, as it’s TERRIBLY outdated (by like five years, or something). I had no idea I have over 175 DVDs!
So day before yesterday I’m leaving for work. I get to the end of the road and my cell phone rings. It’s home! I figure I forgot something.
Sarah’s on the other end, she says “come back home, we have to go to the hospital!” I don’t ask questions, I figure she knows if we need to go to the hospital or not.
I bound up the stairs, hearing Riley screaming. Open the door to see a bloody mouth. Sarah quickly explains that Riley was trying to get between her and the couch, somehow fell, and put his teeth right through his lower lip.
One trip to the ER later, he’s got two stitches holding it together. He screamed the whole time, as he remembered when he had to get blood drawn. He didn’t thrash, though. He pretty much held still.
Ξ January 1st, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ Website |
After being hacked last month, it was time that I started thinking very seriously about the software that renders the site. So…
Presenting Wordpress. It’s basically an upgraded version of what I’ve been running all along. When I’m done, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the old site and the new, but it’ll run much *much* smoother.
I will lash you with a wet noodle!
Kiki’s first jaunt into spaghetti.
Snow today. Woke up to find 8″ on the ground. Knew we were getting snow, but expected 4″-6″ and still coming down heavy.
Called work, told them I would play it by ear as to when I might - or might not - be coming in. They’re only 11 miles away as the crow flies, but said they only had three inches (lucky basts).
When I went out about noon to shovel the walk, sidewalk, path to the car down the driveway and the cars, there was total accumulation of ~14″. Pictures of that to come later. Should have taken pictures of the buried cars, but didn’t.
Guys at work called to harass me about 12:30 or so, apparently bored. I was still shovelling when they did, so Sarah shouted their messages to me.
Plow *finally* showed up at 3:00PM and cleared the driveway. Tried to get him to clear everything by moving the cars, but he was just interested in a path to get the cars out. Said a truck would be back later to ‘tidy up’. It’s 7:30PM and I haven’t seen anyone yet. Maybe tomorrow?
Around six took a jaunt to the store and picked up some much needed food. A family of five eats too dogonne much! And they’re still tiny, it’s going to be a nightmare when they’re older.
Got a great deal on chicken breast, so I made chicken parmesean (one of my specialties). Sarah gave Keeks some spaghetti, and you can see the results above.
You ever spill an entire gallon of paint onto your floor?
No?
I’m one up on you, then.
I can’t say enough good things about this movie!
Serenity was written by Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fame. It’s based on characters from his short lived TV show “Firefly”, which was quite unfairly cancelled by Fox.
Looks like Joss is having the last laugh. The movie opened with a gross of 15 million.
I won’t give any spoilers to the movie here. Let’s just say this: do you remember how you felt the first time you saw “The Empire Strikes Back?” Serenity will make you feel that way.
Five stars!
Ξ September 26th, 2005 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |
Just before the birth of our second son Riley, Sarah went thru a nesting phase in which she wanted something to take care of. Enter Spike, a parakeet she thought would fill the niche.
Spike was full of personality. Where most birds would shy away from people, he’d get right up close and try and nip your fingers if you weren’t careful.
You’ll also note I’m speaking of Spike in the past tense. Saturday night/Sunday morning, about 1am, Riley wakes up crying (as he often does). Sarah gets up to check on him, then wakes me a few minutes later. “I think there’s something wrong with Spike,” she begins.
“Why would you think that? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Because I have him here in my hand,” she retorts.
Sure enough, he’s sitting quite calmly in her palm, not nipping at her fingers like he normally does, just…sitting there.
Riley comes over to see, and I think that freaked him out a bit. He flew up, and smacked right into a wall.
Then of course the cats decide to see what’s flying around the house, so they rush in. I’m just trying to achive as much damage control as I can, so he doesn’t get hurt.
He flys up again, this time into Kira’s room. He lands on the floor - but on his side. I pick him up. He trembled a bit, and died in my hand.
Slayton and I buried him in the morning. I didn’t think that Riley really knew what was going on, but I’ve got to give the kid more credit, he knew darn well. For the rest of the day, he would go up to Spike’s cage, look in and say ‘bye bye, birdie’ (in Riley-ese, of course).
No one is happy about this (understandably). Parakeets are supposed to live upwards of 15 years. We’d had him for just over three, and he was a baby when we got him. What could we have done differently? Why *did* he die?
Ξ September 11th, 2005 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |
Kiki has had a mildly deformed ear since she was born. Pretty much the top of her ear was kind of tucked into the skin behind it.
We didn’t want her going thru life with it like that, so we made an appointment for the 13th to consult with a plastic surgeon on getting it fixed.
Yesterday I was looking at it and thought “I wonder if I can just fold the skin back where it belongs…” and did so. Viola! Her ear is fixed. The true test was seeing if it would hold, and so far, thirty-six hours later it’s remained in place. Time to cancel that appointment!
Ξ July 19th, 2005 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Rant |
For the longest time I’ve believed that I just attracted disagreeable people. I seem to find them no matter where I go.
At my new job as an arcade tech, I have the ‘pleasure’ of working with this guy. He is, in his own words, an absolute prick.
I have no doubts to this claim. He’s about as nice as rubbing fiberglass on a newborn baby’s buttocks.
After yet *another* altercation with this guy today (over nothing important, as these things usually are) I got to thinking: maybe it’s not the other people, maybe it’s me!
I mean, really…people actually avoid me. I used to have a dumpster diving partner, who actually flat-out told me that he didn’t want to dive with me any more. Couldn’t figure it out at the time, but now it makes sense. Supposed friends of mine, some that I’ve had for years, won’t return phone calls or emails.
Heck, the public in general (say, when I go to a store, or whatever) always seems to give me that “gah…I really don’t like the looks of this guy” look. When I drive down the street, people actually *stare*. I don’t drive an outlandish car, and I’m not a bad looking guy (not rip-your-eyes-out ugly, anyway) so there’s got to be something there.
Some vibe, that I put out. Something that says “don’t like me”.
*shrug*
In other news, I dropped off my first Geocache today! Find it here. Just a micro. I’ve been doing a lot of it lately, and have been picking up the lingo, the tricks of the trade, and whatnot.
So we’re out of milk, so I run to the store to get more.
On the way is Staples, and I dumpster dive there regularly to see if they’ve tossed anything nifty.
As I’m driving away, I see a big dirt lump. As I pass it, my brain is still processing the image. Then I realize how much the lump looks like a turtle.
Hit the reverse, and sure enough, looks a lot like a turtle! On closer inspection, it’s a huge freaking snapping turtle!
It’s about a mile from the river, so it must have crawled all that way. It had dug into the dirt trying to cover itself up. It’s really dehydrated, and had some leeches on it (which I pulled off).
The kids, wife and I set him back in the river.
It’s been a fun day all around for the family. Started off with releasing the turtle after a nice breakfast, then we went for a little drive. Earlier in the week we’d tried geocaching, but couldn’t find it. So I checked the site out again for some clues to where it was. We had to do some hiking in the woods, but we found it!
It’s too bad…we got really close when my wife spilled the beans: she’d left the keys in the car, and her purse on the front seat! I was like “you always lock the car when you walk twenty feet from it, why didn’t you do that now?” She was like “well, I didn’t think we were walking that far!”
She walked back, I took the boys the rest of the way (which turned out to be a whopping 100 feet away!).
I’m posting some pictures in the gallery. Check them out!
So the family decided to go to Memorial Park yesterday because the weather has been so nice. Nicer than the previous week anyway - it’s been raining for nearly six days straight.
So Slayton’s torturing some girls on the swings, and Riley’s being picked up by some six year old that is trying to lift him up to the monkey bars (I had to step in and intervene on that one). Meanwhile, Sarah is walking around, and I’m sitting on a bench with Kira.
Suddenly I smelled it: cigarette smoke. I look behind me, and about six feet from me some old guy had come to the park and lit up.
Scenarios fill my mind. In my favourite I walk up to him and say “congratulations!” and of course he says, “for what?” and I say “YOU’RE THE BASTARD THAT LET MY LITTLE GIRL BREATHE HER FIRST SECONDHAND SMOKE, YOU ASSHOLE!” and choke him unto his death.
Of course these are all just flights of mind-fancy. I merely give the guy a dirty look, snuggle Kira a little closer, and take her to the other side of the park, where the trees and shade are, blissfully free of smoke.
Ξ May 8th, 2005 | → Comments Off | ∇ Family |
I just changed my first Kira diaper. I think I have an idea where the writers for The X-Files got their ideas about the black oil aliens.
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