Trouble on the Hunt Ranch!

My son and his friends are always doing something stupid and getting themselves in to trouble. Why, why, why? I understand that (at his age) it is normal to do things like the things that I'm about to mention. I occasionally did smiler things myself, but after getting in trouble I learned from my mistakes and moved on. My son, however, doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes and he is building a history of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I'm debating as to weather I need to come up with a new form of punishment. It appears that what I'm doing just doesn't work with him. I may need some help on this one.

A short while back, I took a walk around the property and found that my kids had took the pruning sheers and made an attempt at pruning some trees, about 20 of them. They must have worked for a couple hours at it judging by the amount of brush that they left all over the ground. My poor trees did nothing to deserve this. It wasn't the attempt at pruning the trees that made me so angry, it was the hitting them with hammers and scaring them up for no reason that angered me. Oh, and cutting a 4 foot hole in the hedges so that they can walk through them... ERRRR!!!! I made the kids take all that brush and walk it around to the burn pile a couple acres away, all of it! There was two weeks of groundation to follow, with no video games, no computer, and no company.
Here's the problem, I felt bad for (my son) after a week, so I decided to let him work off his other week by hauling wood and stacking it. That's my fault!

A week or so after that incident, I had discovered that my wife had let my son buy a BB gun from wal-mart. I informed her that I feel that he is not mature enough for a BB Gun yet, and that I don't think he should have one, "he'll put somebody's eye out" I said. My wife gave me the "he's 12 years old", give him some credit, "he isn't a baby anymore" lecture.
I cringed my teeth and said you'll see, I have a bad feeling about this one.

Two days later I had discovered that he had shot the window out of one of our out buildings. I was so ticked off that I couldn't talk. I was so mad that, in fact, that I didn't talk. I decided to wait a day or so before telling anybody that I had noticed the window so that I would have time to cool off and handle the situation in a non aggressive way. I called him outside and told him the story about how I wanted to confiscate the gun, but mom said that I shouldn't do it. I told him that I'm not mad about the window because I knew that it was doing to happen and so by letting it happen, I feel just as responsible for it happening as he is for doing it. He said it was an accident and promised to be more careful and I believed him.

Two days ago I found a hammer on the ground outside. I hate it when the kids use my tools and leave them all over the property. I find tools clear out in the field when I'm on the tractor. Why would a kid need a damn pair of vice grips out in an open field? Anyway, I look at the closest tree next to the hammer and my son had hammered a bunch of nails in to it for no reason, not to make a tree fort, or anything like that, but just for the hell of it. I brought him outside and told him how disappointed I was that he didn't learn his lesson about defacing the property out here. I explained to him that I work full time in order for us to afford to live here and he is being totally disrespectful to me by doing things like this. "Sorry dad"

Well, last night I has a visit from my neighbor. Guess what! My son and his friend went over to my closest neighbors property and shot the windows out of his cars. Not one, but two of them. Two cars that is, several windows. I guess the groundation thing isn't working out very well, I don't think my son is learning his lesson. I'm so angry right now you would not believe.

For the record, my closest neighbor is many acres away, he doesn't actually live there, he has a shop there on his property where he repairs race cars and tinkers. The two cars were not his every day cars, they were two cars that have been sitting for a year or so, but they were nun the less his cars on his property and they has no broken windows a few days ago. Oh, and one was a truck, now you have the facts.

I'm holding off with punishment long enough to get some advice and opinions from others... What do you all think? The redneck side of me wants to spank some ass right now, but the softer side just think that I need to find a creative and intelligent way of dealing with this parenting problem that I'm facing.

I'm open to suggestions!

The Apple iPod is the 'Best Foods' of Mayonnaise!

John,

I have a question for you on ipods. I want to know how to download and hear music. (without ITunes) is that possible?

Troy

--------------------------

Troy,

First off, iPods are gods gift to music. I could not live without one, it is as handy as a microwave oven. The iPod is the 'Firefox' of web browsers, it is the 'Best Foods' of Mayonnaise, it is the 'Snap-On' of tools, are you picking up what I'm laying down?

Now, with that being said...

You will likely need iTunes in order to sync with your iPod. There may be some iTunes clones out there, but I don't know of them. However, You don't have to pay for your music. There are two ways to import music in to iTunes without buying it.

1. Take all of your music CD's and insert them in to your computer one at a time, with in minutes iTunes will rip them and turn them in to MP3's and then send them to your iPod as well.

2. Download MP3's via other software such as limewire, and then just highlight them and drag them in to the iTunes window. iTunes will add them as if they were downloaded.

If you do buy music through iTunes then it will only let you burn a certain amount of Music CD's with each song because the songs are encrypted. The work around for this is to Burn the purchased songs to a CD, delete the original purchased files, then, put the burned CD back in and iTunes will think it is an original music CD from your collection and thus it will import it into iTunes with no encryption.

Better try that with only one song at first to make sure that they didn't fix that on a recent iTunes update.

Another handy hack is called Copypod. Copypod is a handy little program that will allow you to export all of your music from iTunes, and then save it as a backup, or share it with a friend that recently bought an iPod and doesn't have any music, he can import your entire music collection to his iTunes and then of course it will sync with his new iPod and he will have a ton of music.

If I were you I wouldn't try to avoid iTunes, it is a very handy program. Like everything else with the apple name on it, it is quality. Of course some of what I mentioned above is considered illegal but I wouldn't feel too guilty about doing it considering that I suffered a hard drive crash a while back and I called apple and told them what happened and asked them how I could take the songs off from my iPod and put them back in my newly installed iTunes on my new hard drive. There answer was that "it can't be done". I said I legitimately paid for hundreds of songs and now they are lost forever? "yep", I said nope, I will find a way around it, and I did.

Actually, I found two ways around it but I will only give one of those ways as I'm probably begging for a law suit already. This email is also going to be posted in my blog. The work around for transferring the songs from your iPod back to your hard drive is by plugging in and accessing your iPod via windows explorer, it will appear as a hard drive. Click on that folder or drive and highlight it, now click on 'tools' in windows explorer, then select 'folder options' and then 'view'. Now put a check mark next to show hidden files and folders. Now when you click on your iPod in windows explorer and explore the contents in the folders you will find your music. I prefer the Copypod method however, because copypod remembers all of the data that goes along with your music, your rating, the artist title, and so on.

Hope this helps. I will also post this email in my blog which can be found at www.johnswritings.com

Things sure aren't the same without you in the work environment, let me tell yah!

Talk to you later,

John

Chuck E Cheeses... Save the Robots!

This blog entry will not get many comments.. and it will bore the hell out of nearly everyone who reads it. Don't say that you haven't been warned.
--------------
My personality is strongly characterized in to two categories... The Redneck category and the Nerd category. For the past several days I have been in 'nerd' mode.
Let me explain...
When I was kid, around age 10 or so, I would love to go to Chuck E Cheeses Pizza Time Theater in Chico, Ca. It wasn't the Pizza that I enjoyed so much, it was the animatronics. I love robotics, controls, automation, and industrial machinery. That is why I love my job as a "Industrial Mechanic" today; because I love working on that stuff. Oops, I leaped to the present, OK! Back to age 10.

At age 10, I would sit and stair at those animatronic puppets for hours while my friends were all off playing video games. I was fascinated by them. I wanted to know what was under those costumes. I wanted to know what the control systems looked like in the back room. It would have made my week if I could have been taken on a quick tour to the control room back then to see what made those boogers tick.
The Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater was founded in 1977 by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. It's not doing so well today, in fact, I'm sorry to say that I don't believe that there are too many of them left in existence. Up here in northern California there is still one in Chico, and one in Redding that I know of.

As of the last time I visited the Chico store it didn't look very busy. I'm surprised that it is still open and I will be even more surprised if it stays that way very much longer. The Chico store used to sport what I believed was a 2nd generation stage of The Pizza Time Players, it could have been first gen, I'm not sure. They were some nice vintage animatronics. It has been a while since I have visited that store and they may have converted to the more modern Rock-afire Explosion stage of animatronics which I believe was made by "Aaron Fechter" a true animatronic guru. I spoke with him earlier today via email. Talk about a dream job.

I spent some time in the Redding store tonight after hearing a rumor from a friend. Rumor had it that the Redding store was closing and selling everything in the building because they were opening a brand new store with modern animatronics across town somewhere. I'm guessing that when they said "modern" animatronics that they were referring to the Rock-afire Explosion stage.
I also talked to the owner of that store tonight and confirmed the rumor, however, he is not aloud to sell any of the animatronics because of some contract with CEC. He said that he will likely destroy them... EEEK! I tried talking him out of it but he apparently isn't hurting for money and he must fear the CEC people will chop off his arm if he were to let them go to a good home, such as my home!
RIP robots :-(
If I could, I would find the dumpster and salvage the parts :-(

You think I'm crazy huh? Well there are many more just like me. There are clubs and millionaires that buy out these animatronic stages and set them up in their houses. One man owns like 8 different complete stages with the lighting, curtains and all. Check out THIS WEB SITE full of nerds just like me.

One of my favorite machines was a 8 foot tall singing, guitar playing Elvis impersonator called "The King". This scary looking beast could be found in the Chico store many years ago, but disappeared and was replaced by a big screen TV. The Elvis character was pretty cool because as the machine was dead and lifeless in between shows it would pop open one eye and look around for a second and then go back to sleep. I thought that was the coolest. I'm guessing that was an intentional tone in the programming, but it could have been a pneumatic problem also. Those machines were ran by air and the valves would often stick, I could hear the air compressor running in the back room between shows. Aaron Fechter created the control system for that machine also.

I found one on eBay about 8 months ago and it only went for about two grand. It was complete and in fully working condition. Identical to the one that used to be in the Chico store. I wish I would have bought it, but my wife wasn't so happy about the idea of spending that kind of money on a 8 foot animated teddy bear. I should have done it anyway.

In the early 80's, these pneumatic machines were ran by valves opening and closing, control boards, and reel to reel players for the music. I think they may have been upgraded to a bank of 8 track tapes that started on que, but don't quote me on it.
Today, I believe that the more modern Rock-afire Explosion puppets are controlled by a controller called the "Chris Thrash controller" or "Thrash Controller". Again, don't quote me. This controller consists of a control board for each puppet in the show, a power supply, and an iPod. That's right, they are controlled by an iPod. Aaron Fechter has created a way to put both the music, and the motion programming in to a MP3 player format that loads on to the iPod. Much more modern then a reel to reel or a bank of 8 track tapes. Very cool indeed!

So today I emailed Aaron and asked him why he chose not to create a pc software based controller in a time line format. This would make it easy to program the shows by just about anybody. I'm referring to software similar to the LOR (Light-o-rama) software that is used to produce modern xmas light shows.
His reply was that it is all about cost and reliability and specs. After all, his controller has two boards in it, why add a computer to that?
I guess that makes perfect since. Computers aren't yet stable enough for most industrial applications anyway, that's why we use plc's (programmable logic controllers) instead. PLC's are capable of performing the same task repeatedly day in and day out for years and years without a single error. They are reliable work horses and you can count on them. If you have ever visited a theme park then you have counted on them. Could you imagine running the drop zone on a pc running windows... EEEEK!!! You might as well jump. (lol)

Here are my last words..
SAVE THE ROBOTS IN REDDING... THEY DON'T DESERVE TO BE DESTROYED! They are vintage, they are history, they are cool.

-----------

I told you that you would be bored to death. Maybe next time you will listen!

John

"Letters from a Skeptic" -by Gregory & Edward Boyd

Last night, at midnight to be exact, My friend Donny showed up to my door with a brand new hard copy of a book called "Letters from a Skeptic". This book was purchased for me, and mailed to Donny to bring to me. With the thought in mind that someone that I have never met took the time and money to purchase this book and mail it out just for me was pretty flattering.
Because of this effort that was put fourth by a total stranger, I dove in to this book with the determination to read the entire book weather or not I believe any of it's content, or weather or not I feel that it is a total waste of words.
Nearly three hours later.. I had to put the book down knowing that I had to go to work the next day (today). I had already read half of the book. I'm devouring this book like candy, I can't get enough of it. I can't get over the fact that the very same questions that Edward Boyd has written are the exact questions that I had asked earlier in my blog. And the majority of the answers that were given by his son Gregory Boyd are satisfactory to me. I have to work for the next four days, so I won't have time to finish it until Wednesday, but I'm looking forward to continue reading where I had left off.
I take pride in the fact that I call it as I see it. If I didn't care too much for this book then I would have not hesitated in saying so. I believe that honesty is a virtue, even to non believers. This book is like an early Christmas present. I can't say enough how much I'm getting out of it.
I want to thank 'John Smulo' for sending it to me.
I highly recommend this book to people as myself that are agnostic. You will get logical answers to your questions. I will keep you posted on my final thoughts on this book when I finish it. So far, at half way point, it is fantastic.
Here is a fact that you will find hard to believe. Even though I'm a good reader, I have only read 2 books in my entire life. I read web pages, I read magazines, but I can only read things that I'm strongly interested in or my eyes keep following along with the words and my mind changes channels without even notifying me. Next thing I know, I'm half way down the page and have no clue even as to where I had left off.
I do not have that problem with this book due to my strong interest in it's content.
Thanks again John for sending this book to a total stranger.

I may have some more questions at the end of this book, I'll have to wait and see.

John

Keep'n it Short & Sweet.

I haven't written in this blog for a while because there really hasn't been much new and exciting to write about. It's pretty tough to come up with anything really exciting to top my last entry about my door handle. '-)

Seriously though...
Last night we lit up a bond fire. Donny and Belinda came down and we drank beer and kicked back around the fire. Did I mention how much I enjoy living in the country? Last night I told Donny "I bet you forgot to bring that book down again" referring to the (letters from a skeptic) book that was sent to him for me quite a while back. He said "nope, it's in the car" but I have a feeling that it is still in his car today, and he is back at home... In Redding!
Maybe we can all pressure him in to mailing it to me or something.

This morning I woke up alone, the kids were in school, and the wife was at work. I flipped through the channels and ended up accidentally watching a very good movie called "A Perfect Stranger" by Danielle Steel. I love those sappy love stories... My gay?

Anyways...
I haven't worked out in two day's, therefore, the guilt is kicking in. I'm hitting the gym tonight for sure. I just finished not one but 'two' tuna and avocado sandwiches. Sounds nasty? Don't knock it until you've tried it. It's like pouring peanuts in coke and drinking it while eating the peanuts at the same time. It's actually really good.

I'm thinking about taking on a second job. Two thought's just rolled through my head while writing this update. Number one, my hat makes a really good fly swatter. Number two, it makes no since that I have three days off from work, every week, and I chose to spend the first 3/4 of each of them doing absolutely nothing. Then I spend a couple hours in the evening at the gym to make up for my lack of physical activity during the first 3/4 of the day. I need to keep busier during my days off. A second job might help. I just may give it a try.

Well, I'll keep it short and sweet. -John