DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

It was a mediocre train wreak. 2.5 stars

Well no big surprises here. With everything carefully planned out ahead of time, there wasn’t much chance of it anyway. Kerry did a credible job, he seemed very well prepared as his answers and follow-ups seemed to be timed to the second. He still wasn’t entirely human, but far from the woodenness of Gore. Of course Gore is the reason for many of the new debate “rules”. Like his sneaking up behind on Bush when he was trying to be the alpha male and when in his primary race had a planted person in the audence that he referenced.

Considering what a poor speaker Bush is he managed to turn in a passing performance. He wasn’t as well prepared as Kerry was, could be that as the incumbant he has a record to defend. Which Kerry persistantly attacked him on it. He spent too much time on the defense, instead of going on offense. He also over did the Kerry flip flop labeling, three times should have been sufficient.

The sad thing is that anyone with the least interest in the race didn’t learn anything new, as Kerry offered no details. The most interesting was when we briefly saw Kerry as a human being when Bush got Kerry to smile for real when Bush was praising Kerrys kids. If he could harness that and show that he isn’t a robot politician, Bush could be in a heap of trouble.

I was thinking about the Lincoln debates and how they could go at it for hours on one topic, then was a time when you really knew who you were voting for.

Well I got around to cancelling my free trial before it ended. I was surprised how fast I actually got to speak to a human. Allen was disappointed that I was cancelling but was delighted that he was the one that got to process my cancellation. He of course asked my reason, and I told him. Then he proceeded to try to sell me on the AOL service for other broadband connections, you know so I could still get all their ads, chat rooms, IM and all those other features that I’ve never used and never will. I kept saying I wasn’t interested. He asked why don’t I try it out, after all I still have hundreds of free hours coming to me. I said that I’ll just have to cancel at the end of the free trial so I want to CANCEL NOW. PLEASE CANCEL. Now he is upset that I’m “yelling” at him CANCEL. I ask for his supervisor. He says, “What have I done?” I say you are not letting me cancel. He says, “I never said that.” I then say, well how long are you going to keep me on the phone while not canceling my account? He then trys to sell me again on the broadband. He asks some other question about if I had paid for the account would I still be cancelling or something, I didn’t follow and said what? He then gave up at this point and uncerimoniously stated he’ll cancel my account please hold on. A minute later he gives me a cancellation number and plays some canned Legal disclaimer.

I wish he hadn’t gotten me riled up, I could have had some fun with him, trying to torture him back, like asking if he’s found Jesus or can I speak to someone that understands English and so on.

An unnrated subtitled Spanish film. Well acted but hard to follow for us slower witted folks, plus a heaping serving of sex and nudity. It was kind of like an Emmanuel movie but with a complex storyline and real production values.

BTW Paz Vega as “Lucia” is damn fine.

Well they finally got around to posting the lastest submissions to street mattress and I’ll be damned if Rebecca hasn’t manged to stay just one step ahead of me. We now stand at 555 to 554. The site as whole also passed a milestone this week, there are now over 5000 street mattresses.

Today I installed this heavy duty self stick flashing to the the bottom and side of the channel and caulked where it meets the HardiPlank on the garage wall.

Neve couldn’t save this one. I guess the problem was that I thought it was going to be an actually movie with story arcs you know a PLOT. It was more of mockumentary without the mocking. If you like dance you’ll probably like it, but don’t be fooled by the Descriptive blurb, at least the one Netflix has on it as it is referring to a whole different film.

Today I started to tackle the gutter channel. Because I couldn’t tie into the existing garage roof, I had to form a drainage channel.

1. Here is the “channel” area. You can see the top of the garage wall, the edge of the drywall a gap and then the big beam.

2. Here I’ve added a section of styrofoam insulation between the beam and the drywall and extending up flush to the beam brackets where a section of plywood continues up to flush the area up.

3. Now I’ve added a piece of plywood covering the styrofoam and the other section of plywood and caulked where it meets the bottom.

4. Here is the view down the gutter channel. Notice both “cracks” have been caulked.

It was a long day as I had to figure out just how I was going to go about constructing the gutter channel, go buy the plywood, HardiPlank and other supplies. Then I had to organize and move things around for what seemed like hours to clear off my table saw and auxiliary table of all my tools and supplies I’ve piled on over the last couple months so that I could actually roll out the table saw to cut down the HardiPlank and plywood to size. It was nice to be able to cut the HardiPlank on the table saw of course I changed to a cheap circular carbide blade before proceeding.

Today I made the rafters, I just dry fitted them as I’ll have to make some adjustments after some more elements are installed, but nothing more than a little trim here and there. Having the rafters up really made it seem like a room. Too bad I can’t just lay a giant piece of glass on top.

This wasn’t your usual WWII flick. It is a duel between a Russian sniper and a German sniper, not a Yankee in the whole movie. Who are you supposed to root for?

I liked the movie, Ed Harris and Jude Law did a great job as well as Rachel Weiz who does have an adorable quality to her.

Today I installed the posts and the beams. I managed to hoist the beam for against the house which is about 10 feet above the ground into place without any help. Replacing the garage side beam was a bit more difficult as it was about 3/16″ too long, no that the third wall is installed. I was able to “persuade” it into place. Drilled the bolt holes and fastened everything up tightly.

Lauren wanted to go to Drug Emporium in Huntington Beach, so we went to the Claim Jumper in Fountain Valley for dinner to minimize the amount of driving. I ordered my usual meatloaf and mud pie. Lauren ordered the salad bar and got this big ass bran muffin.

After dinner we managed to get a street mattress photo and then went to Drug Emporium .

Lauren was feeling okay so we stopped at ETC, a clothing store next to Home Depot by our house.

View all of todays pictures.

(3.75 stars) Another Ben Stiller “painful” romantic comedy. Of course it had the obligitory bodily function humor and a good old gross out. “The sweaty attempted block”

Who knew Moe, um I mean Hank Azaria was such a stud?

Jennifer Aniston was cute as ever. However, she was a bit more than just cute in this dress.

Today they slurried in front of our house.

Finished sanding the posts and started to varathane them.