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My site! She is empty!

So, my car got broken in to Friday. They stole my Valentine 1 and my Nuvi 350. That sucked.

And we had a lot of fun at The Garage for Courtney’s birthday festivities on Saturday night!

Woo!

Vehicle stop for traffic offense results in meth-related arrest

Published: Friday, February 8, 2008 12:14 PM CST
For the Daily Gate City

The Lee County Narcotics Task Force reported the arrest of a Keokuk man on a felony drug charge.

Chris-topher A. Matous, 23, 3000 S. Seventh St., was charged with conspiracy to manufacture less than five grams of methamphetamine, a Class C felony. If convicted, Matous could face up to 10 years in a state correctional facility.

The arrest stems from an investigation by the task force into allegations Matous was involved in the manufacture of methamphetamine in the Keokuk area.

He was arrested Thursday following a traffic stop for a driving offense by Keokuk police. Investigators later searched the vehicle and found items that indicated the manufacture of and/or use of methamphetamine.

Task force Commander Dave Hinton said Matous had a knife in his possession. Matous was taken to the Lee County Jail pending an initial court appearance.

Matous also was charged with driving under suspension and operating while intoxicated.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office also assisted with the investigation.

Matous is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

The Lee County Narcotics Task Force is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Justice and funds administered by the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy.

And the first comment on the article…

Boo….the Boogeyman strikes again wrote on Feb 8, 2008 1:55 PM:
” hmmmm….Under 5 grams which could be .01 gram to .499 grams. Pretty small amount…IIn the worse case scenario, ts still about 2 years in prison a gram. So add up the total LOSS to society (40,000 a year per inmate for 10 years=400,000 plus trial, medical care, public defender, jail services, court services, police services…it probably adds up to a half million dollar waste of tax payer funds). What a waste, I guarantee you that no one in this world would have ever spent half a million on Mr Matous or his family to HELP them yet we’ll spend like crazy to condemn them.

A knife…BOO… there’s the meth boogeyman again. Of course it could have been completely legal to have the knife since I didn’t see where they had charged hm with a weapons offense. The police are trying to scare you. Maybe it was a pocketknife (i carry one of those) or a kitchen knife. BOO…do they report on everyone they arrest and the contents of their pockets….?

How about a drug dversion program for Mr Matous? Maybe we could spend some cash and help the Matous family rather than throw them away. Ths meth thng is out of control and I don’t mean its use or manufacture, as bad as it may be. Let’s stop the punitive enforcement of draconian laws concerning drugs. Let’s recall law enforcement’s reckless pursuit of drug offenses and replace them with a more measured response. Let’s make sure that police administators quit perpetuating myths and misconceptons. We always hear about the social costs of meth….lets hear about the costs of meth related law enforcement in terms of money, time and lives. Maybe those resources could be better spent elsewhere (schools, housing, heath care). “

Phrases from this Cracked.com article that I want to remember to use in casual conversation.

Regarding the word “Alligator”: Because it’s hard to imagine what people called them before then. We figure cries of “Ye Gods, watch out for that Chompapottamus!” were much more common in those days.

Regarding the word “epileptic”: He was a poet, an actor, and a doctor?! It makes us wonder if Shakespeare might have invented other afflictions that didn’t catch on, like tuberculasers or genital slurpees.

I’m glad I’m not a superstar. If I had to go to rehab every time I’ve gotten drunk in public and made a fool out of myself I’d never have any time to drink!

I realize they don’t rhyme when you say them right, but I don’t.

Lots been going on! Lake came in for the weekend before Christmas and that was awesome. We did lots of roaming around, found a scary as hell bar (The Whisky Bar), went out to the mountains to see the snow, went drinking and partying in Bellevue and just generally had a blast.

Then it was Christmas and we didn’t do much. We exchanged gifts on Thursday cause we were too excited and we had dinner with my boss’s family on Christmas day which was very nice. The food and the company was really excellent and it was nice to be with a large group on Christmas.

Then my brother and sister in law came out for a while over New Years and that rocked. We discovered Beecher’s mac and cheese which is responsible for the incredible growth of my gut over the past two weeks, and we went ferry hopping, explored downtown a little, saw the fireworks from right under the Space Needle on New Years and attempted to go tubing at Snoqualmie but ended up having to pull off and just play in the deep, deep snow for a while.

A note on that: We were about 6 miles away from the exit we needed and suddenly everyone was pulling off and putting on snow chains. I haven’t used my Explorer in deep snow very much yet so I didn’t know if I could continue without chains. We didn’t think it was worth the risk so we pulled off the exit and played in the snow for about an hour. It was deep as hell. When I stepped out into the burm I sunk up to my crotch. Turns out my truck probably would have been fine, but I’m gonna get a set of chains just in case.

What else? Courtney and I drove out to Rainer last weekend and took Sonja in the hopes she would get a chance to play in deep snow, which she’s never really done before. The drive up to Paradise was awesome but we found out that dogs are not allowed in the snow. We’re definitely gonna go back soon and play more but we’ll have to leave Sonja home. I’m planning to take her to Snoqualmie this weekend for her chance.

The snow plows at Rainer are really sweet. They look like giant rotary lawnmowers and just destroy the snow. That trip was also interesting because the road between the bottom town and the top town gets closed off at 6:00pm so you have to be out of there, or I guess sleep in your car? I’m still not clear on that. We were totally unprepared to camp so we came back early 🙂

And… work is going well. We’re busy and expect to get super busy in a few weeks. A few of our people went to CES to meet with customers and it sounds like we’ll have a lot of business coming our way soon. Till then, make sure you check out our kiosks in InMotion stores in airports around the country!

Also, I really like the “fake” metal band Dethklok. They are a made up band for the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse and they totally rock.

Oh! And I’ve switched my music buying to Amazon’s MP3 service. It’s cheap(er), DRM free and they have everything I’ve searched for so far. They also have downloaders that work in Windows and Mac so it’s really just totally awesome.

I guess there’s more… actually.

I’m working on a new LED based project that has me experimenting with lots of new stuff. I don’t want to give the idea away too much yet, cause I am really excited to surprise people with it, but I’ve been learning how to work with high powered neodymium magnets, various types of casting resin and made my first silicon mold ever. So that rocked! You can see some pictures of my progress at Light^2

So far I’ve been working with polyester resin, which fucking reeks and I hate using and recently clear urethane resin which has no real smell but is apparently really bad for you. I think I’ll end up going with the polyester because it degasses much more nicely. The urethane has a ton of tiny bubbles that fuck up the surface when I sand it.

What I am working on now is trying to figure out how to cast the thing I am casting with all the stuff embedded in it that I want to embed in it and have the exposed surfaces even with the exposed embedments. So there’s that.

Woo! Life!

Oh, I totally forgot the Pho. I tried Pho for the first time a few weeks back and really liked it. Last night I convinced Courtney to try a Vietnamese restaurant with me and while she liked what she had (not Pho) she tried my Pho and loved that. So we went back tonight and both had Pho and it was super good. I’m definitely a fan.

Every Christmas morning trillions of people open their new iPods and promptly… realize it doesn’t work with Windows 98. Then they come hunting for vPod.

A just released a new version of AVRFuses for Mac (Cocoa) that fixes a fairly glaring bug. The previous version would not let you unset fuses that had a single option. So, for things like setting the clock (where there are many options) it worked fine but for things like setting Serial Programming Enabled (which is just on or off) it would not work.

Get the new version at AVRFuses 1.1 for Mac

I’ve been trying to figure out what is being said in the CB chatter in Revolver by Hooverphonic forever, and for some reason today I could hear it just fine when I could never figure it out before. I found the sample, eventually, on Google.

“Breaker one niner, are there any Smokeys with ears on? If you want a smokey good buddy…”

“If you want a smokey good buddy try channel nine. You’re not gonna find any on this one. I’ve got a ten thirtythree here and I’m looking for a bear. What’s your handle good buddy? My handle is Landcraft and I’m pushing an eighteen wheeler. Landcraft there’s no bears on this interstate. Is there anyone hurt on that ten thirtythree?”

Glad that’s solved…

Last weekend I spent some time rewriting AVRFuses in Cocoa specifically for Mac. The old version required Mono and X11 and was a big pain in the ass on Mac, plus it didn’t seem to work in Leopard. Since I wrote it for Mac in the first place with Linux and Windows support being a random bonus I decided it was time to start over.

The new version of AVRFuses is completely rewritten in Cocoa and looks and feels like any other Mac app. I also added support for erasing, programming and verifying flash and EEPROM and verification of fuses. I intend to add the same for lock bits eventually.

I haven’t updated the web page for AVRFuses yet, but for now you can download the new version by clicking here. So, give it a try and tell me what you think!