This morning at work we discovered our old refrigerator was in dire need of a defrosting. So much ice had built up in the freezer section of the mini-fridge that it wouldn’t hold a single frozen meal. In lieu of the more patient method of unplugging the fridge and letting it defrost on its own, I decided to hammer on the chunk of ice with the first thing available: an old hard drive.
The corner of the hard drive was very sharp and managed to break off a significant chunk of ice. Unfortunatel
I haven’t updated in a couple of days so today I’m playing catch up.
Thanksgiving was as good as it gets. We descended upon dad’s house this year for our festivities. He didn’t mind, as he got a free house cleaning out of the deal from mom, sis’ and Susan. Dad already sent us the cleaning schedule for 2008 so I suspect we’ll be having Thanksgiving at his place for years to come.
Not much to say about the meal itself; everything was great and there was plenty of it.
Dad mentioned so
Tuesday morning around 9am I decided to go for a quick walk and get away from my desk for a few minutes. I grabbed my MP3 player and headphones and walked a mile lap around the center.
Rounding the final corner on my way back to my building I was almost run down by one of our security trucks, lights-a-flashin’. That truck was followed by a smaller security kart, with two more security peoples inside. As I approached the building’s front door the trio, walking briskly, walked up behind me. I
I am sitting in my truck in Norman Regional Hospital's parking lot. It's Saturday morning, 10:23am. "Living Our Dream," one of the several Oklahoma Weight Loss Options support groups, doesn't meet for another 40 minutes. With the radio off, the only sound inside the cab is the occasional rush of wind blowing through the slightly cracked windows. For the next 40 minutes it's just me, sitting in silence, wondering how on earth things got to this point.
Attending this meeting is a prerequisite
For the past three weeks, the city of Yukon has been preparing for this weekend's opening of their giant Christmas light festival, Christmas in the Park. In fact, when the family and I went to the Community Center the weekend before Halloween for their annual haunted house (Spooksville), Christmas lights were already being hung around the parking lot.
While we were out with the kids tonight we decided to drive through the park and look at the lights. Gates were scheduled to open at 6pm, and
On the way home from work today I pulled up to a four-way intersection with traffic backed up in all four directions. After much honking, I could see cars to my left and to my right driving through the intersection. My lane didn't move. After more honking, another two cars crossed in front of me. My lane didn't budge an inch. In front of me were a couple of cars backed up behind a semi truck. Then, I saw them; the words painted on the back of the 18 wheeler:
STUDENT DRIVER
You know, I un
Apparently, squirrel traps do in fact work, given enough time. After a couple of days of no luck I moved the trap closer to where I thought the squirrel was entering the attic. Today when I came home from work, Mason and I heard a sound that sounded like the neighbor was hammering on something. It took us a few minutes to realize the sound was coming from our own attic. With Mason preoccupied with the Wii, I went into the attic and retreived my captured critter. I'll spare you the details, but a
I was okay with our cohabitation for a while. Had they chosen to live quietly in the attic instead of continually waking us up in the middle of the night with their scratching and rummaging, we could have remained housemates for some time. Unfortunately for them, this will not is not the case. One of us has to go, and it's not going to be me.
(Famous last words, right?)
After taking a public beating due to my prior critter removal efforts (although in my defense, poisoning a possum work
My latest free Visual Basic program is CrawlPaper, a small utility that randomly selects wallpapers and displays them as your background in Windows. After unzipping the zip file you will see Crawlpaper (13k) and a folder called Wallpapers. Simply place your desktop wallpapers in that folder (most major file types supported) and Crawlpaper will randomly select one and change your background wallpaper. The program will allow you to stretch, tile or center the wallpapers based on your preference. B
Friday night Susan, Mason, Morgan and I met the Martins (my friend Jeff, his wife Heather, and their two youngest children Talon and Madison) for dinner at Mazzio's Pizza in Yukon. It doesn't seem like that long ago I was washing dishes and preparing pizzas and Jeff was delivering pizzas at that exact same location, but when I do the math I quickly realize that was over 18 years ago. Kids and young adults often throw around the phrase "time flies," but it is not until you get a little older that
Up and Running!
After a couple of days of installing, tweaking, and configuring, everything is up and running at casa O'Hara. robohara.com, along with half a dozen other websites, are now running on my home computer. All this would not have been possible without the help of my old friend Jeff, co-owner of Managed Data Solutions. If you ever need hosting, consulting, backups or any other type of data solution, give MDS a try. Good peoples, they are. Over the past 48 hours, again with major help
The other night while taking a test in class I came up with a good idea for cheating. First, carefully peel the wrapper off a 20oz Coke bottle. Scan the label into your computer. Using Photoshop, remove the ingredients and replace that text with whatever cheatsheet you need for your test. I'm pretty sure you could get quite a bit of writing unnoticed on there, and even teachers who ask you to clear your desk of books and papers will probably let you leave a Coke on your desk.
I haven't trie
My problems began last month on a Saturday with a simple e-mail error. "Mail server not responding."
If you stop and think about the Internet, it's pretty amazing that it works at all. I mean, to get an e-mail from one place to another it has to hop across several routes. Each of these routes include switches, routers, servers and Internet connections, all of which must be up, functioning, and correctly configured. Your single piece of electronic mail may bounce through a dozen or so of the
Halloween has come and gone and things are back to normal for the most part. All the skull-shaped candles, plastic skeletons and other assorted scary decorations have been packed away for another year. Last year's Halloween candy has been dumped from the kitchen's candy bowl, which has now been filled with this year's trick-or-treat bounty. Yes, the kids get so much candy that it typically lasts an entire year. And even though we've combined all the acquired candy into one central bowl, apparent
This year our front porch hosts four carved jack-o-lanterns. Mason drew the face on his pumpkin and I cut it out for him. When I asked Morgan what she wanted on hers, she replied, "bat." So, she got a bat. Susan's is a traditional looking jack-o-lantern while mine is a creepy alien face, an idea that I got from a downloaded pack of jack-o-lantern templates.
Here are Mason's, Daddy's, and Morgan's jack-o-lanterns out on the front porch (Mommy's is on the other side).
If you're inter
Papa Bear has several distinct roles and duties within his own cave. Some of these responsibilities are inherited; others are assigned.
Papa Bear's primary responsibility is the safety and security of Mama Bear and her cubs. Keeping the cubs safe involves watching over them and protecting them from serious harm. Sometimes Papa Bear lets the cubs do dangerous things and sometimes the cubs get hurt, but that's how cubs learn. When Papa Bear sees a truly dangerous situation, he will intervene.
This weekend Susan and I took the kids to "Spooksville," one of those small town Halloween festivals that is offered as a "safe alternative" to trick-or-treating. And without going too far off on a tangent, let me just say that trick-or-treating is not optional in my household -- my two kids WILL march their cute little costumed butts door to door, regardless of weather conditions or social acceptance, gathering as much candy as possible every October 31st. Period. They will do this every year u
Mention "fried chicken" in Oklahoma and it won't take long before someone recommends Eischen's ("eye-shuns"). Eischen's Bar, out in Okarche, Oklahoma claims to have the world's best fried chicken. Today, Dad, Mason and I decided to test their claims.
Okarche is 25 miles northwest of Yukon. Dad and I chatted during the drive while Mason played some Connect Four on his Gameboy. It's a good thing he had something to keep him occupied; based on bad information I gleened from the Internet, we dro
While driving home from work yesterday I heard Queen's "You're My Best Friend" on the radio and it reminded me of the same story it always reminds me of.
In 2nd grade, my best friend Andy Willrath moved away. My new best friend became Chris Brogan, fellow Myers Elementary student and fellow fan of all things geeky. Both of us were interested in UFOs, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Chris owned a 24" Godzilla and I owned several of the 24" Shogun Warriors -- the two of us spent many hours
After a few days of ups and downs, followed by several days of just downs, my web host is back online. For you, that means several blog entries I've been saving in my head. For me, that means I no longer have to sit in front of the computer hitting F5 trying over and over to refresh my e-mail program in hopes of getting some. Speaking of e-mail, it appears like anything sent to me from last Friday until yesterday ended up in virtual la-la land, so if you sent me something and I didn't respond, I
This morning on the radio I learned that October 23-27 is Celebrate Job Loss Week, "to focus on a plan to celebrate and move on after getting fired or laid off." In honor of such an occasion, I will now share with you the story of Heavenly Pizza.
In the fall of 1993, after attending Redlands Community College for two years, I transferred to Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma, some 60 miles away from home. I arrived in town only a few days before school began, at
The worst part about not having Internet access during a four-day vacation is by the time I finally get around to blogging about the trip, I tend to skim over the details and just hit the highlights. Of course the way I ramble on, maybe that's not such a bad thing. With that, here are the highlights, with a link to pictures at the end.
Thursday
Departed for Broken Bow, Oklahoma around noon. Original plan called for three vehicles to make the trip: our van (with me, Susan, and our kids),
There was a time when every weekend was a mini-vacation. Not so, these days. There are no more spontaneous road trips, no more vacations on a whim any longer. With two young children underfoot, trips have to be carefully planned nowadays. We can’t step outside the house without snacks, DVDs, CDs, videogames, diapers … not to mention stuff for the kids!
Tomorrow morning the four of us hit the road for southeastern Oklahoma. Once again we’ll be roughing it in a plush air-conditioned cabin (th
I've knocked this web down at least twice now and this dude keeps coming back to the same spot. Who am I to say where a spider can or can't live? I now present to you the newest addition to the family, Mr. Giant Freakin' Spider.
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