I do not put much thought into the spread of germs, viruses, bacteria, and whatnot. When it comes these subjects, I sort of take a caveman approach to them. Cavemen did not understand any of those things, so they were pretty much oblivious to how easily germs can spread, and they turned out okay. It does not take much human interaction for the transmittal of germs from one person to another. I would wager that a lot of these germs spreading are due to children. Children go to school and obtain various germs, than carry them home to their parents, who then retransmit them to co-workers and friends.

The reason I bring this up is because Friday I was sitting at work browsing the interwebs, when all of sudden, I felt not quite right. I could not exactly pinpoint what was wrong, but something was. A few minutes later, I felt a odd discomfort at the back of my nasal region, where your nose holes connect with your throat. It hit like a ton of bricks, one second I was fine, the next, I felt like shiznit. I left work a little early and came home to rest. I figured if I had some sort of bug, the best way to get rid of it would be to kill it with alcohol, so I drank a bunch of whiskey. I am not sure if it helped fix anything, but it sure made me feel better 8-).

The next morning it was 10 times worse. When I spoke, almost no sound came out, and I was hocking up huge chunks of yellowy browny clumpy junk, with a little bit of blood in it. Yuck. I went on through my daily routine without taking any medicine, because I had a hockey game later that night. Hockey usually makes me feel better and overcome any sickness, because I sweat most of it out.

Anyway, when I got to hockey, another guy on the team had the exact same symptoms and got them at exactly the same time frame as I did. So we both pretty much had to get it from the same place. The last place we were both at was hockey on Thursday night. I finally figured out that after the game, in the handshake line, I touched about 30 different people. I was in a such a hurry to get out of there after the game, that I did not wash my hand or anything. Bam, that had to be it. I touched a bunch of people's hands, then I got sick. How easy is that? Germs are pretty bad ass when you think about it.

I didn't come across this magical revelation until I was half way through the handshake line of Saturday night's game. I immediately went to the locker room and washed my hands really well. I even used my shirt to open the bathroom door on the way out so as not to risk and more germs.

Usually I do not retain these types of lessons, and I suspect in a few weeks, I will be back to my normal activity of not washing my hands immediately after the game, but I am going to try really hard to implement it as part of the routine.

It has been a while since I referenced my guitar hunt. (April 16th in fact - http://a0001718.blogspot.com/2007/04/not-lot-to-report-these-days.html)

Well, I completed the task yesterday. I bought a Takamine EG340SC (http://www.takamine.com/?fa=detail&mid=1978&sid=524).

Just as I was hunting for, it is a middle of the road guitar... not a cheapo, not a really expensive one. I spent months researching, and settled on this one because it had a solid spruce top. If you are not familiar with guitars at all, you need a solid top for good sound quality and durability.. Additionally, I really needed a cutaway, since I play things that are extraordinarily difficult without one. You really have to go all gimpy to play the 19th fret on a guitar with no cutaway. Next, I really did not care if the guitar was only acoustic, or an acoustic/electric, but when I realized the Takamine TP4T electronics featured an on board tuner as well, I was sold.

Musician's Friend (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/) was having a sale on their "scratch and dent" items. Since this guitar will replace my current daily player, I could not think of a reason not to just get a scratch and dent item. It is guaranteed to work just like it did when it was brand new, and I could play it for 45 days then send it back if I was unhappy for any reason for a full refund. The MSRP is $589.00, but Musician's Friend sells them for $399.00. The scratch and dent models were $339.00, and the sale was another 10% on top of that, so I ended up paying $305.00, and shipping was free.

I got the guitar yesterday and inspected it thoroughly. I cannot find anything wrong with the guitar whatsoever. I am not exactly sure why it was a scratch and dent item. I suppose they count it as scratch and dent if the original box it came from the manufacturer in was messed up, or if it was a floor model for any period of time, but I cannot find a single scratch, dent, ding smudge, nick, or crack of any sort anywhere on the guitar.

It is a fantastical guitar. The tone is amazing, and it projects a LOT of sound. The on board tuner could not be any easier to use. You simply push the tuner button and hit a string, and it has a display that tells you to tune up or down till it is the correct note.

Anyhoo, they still have some left, they are just not on sale any more. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up... they are so choice.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Takamine-G-Series-EG340SC-Dreadnought-Cutaway-AcousticElectric-Guitar?sku=512207X

The pictures really do not do the guitar justice, but it is rather difficult to quickly photograph something shiny, with a flash, you'll get the general idea.

Everyone should look into solar screens for their homes. Solar screens are windows screens that feature a more dense pattern than a regular screen, and are crafted out of a material that is designed to block light and heat from entering your home.

For me, I was tired of light shining into my living room in the afternoons/evenings. My living room windows unfortunately face west, so it kind of sucks because the light shines in during prime time television. So I bought 3 do it yourself solar screen kits from a local vendor.

Building the screens was much easier than I had anticipated, after a little bit of trial and error with the first one. In the past, I have always been horrible of rolling screens, with the stupid roller, and the splines, and all that. Basically, the screen kits consisted of 4 corner pieces that you lodged into the screen frame pieces, which you cut with a hacksaw to the height and width of your windows. I hacked the pieces, installed the corners, checked to make sure they fit (the first couple of times they didn't because I measured wrong like a dumb ass), then laid the screen down flat to roll in the screen part.

I found that the best way to do this was to put on some sort of knee pads so you can easy scoot around the screen on the ground. I used old hockey shin guards for this, and they worked like a champ. Keeping the screen taught while rolling it down into the groove was a little bit difficult, but I got it done. Once a foot or so was in the groove, I would lay in the spline piece, and roll it down into the screen inside the groove using the other end of the roller. When I got to the forth corner (the one I started on), there was a little bit of buckling, so I would undo about a foot from the first side I did, pull it taught, then roll it back in. They turned out perfectly.

I did run into one issue where I did not have enough screen to complete the third one. The instructions that came with the kit said "cut the screen the size of the frame with a little bit to spare". I was super pissed when I didn't have enough, but ultimately I suppose I could have planned ahead a little better. Nonetheless, I crafted an email to the company, explaining what had happened, and that I thought it was their fault because there instructions were not precise. Apparently, they agreed with me and offered to send me out a new pieces for the third screen free of charge (woot!).

The screen were Suntex brand material and they are designed to cut 90% of the heat from entering the windows. I would have to say their claim is fairly accurate. After a couple of hours in direct sunlight, you can touch the windows on the inside of the house, and they feel the same temperature as the room, give or take a couple of degrees. Also, they block most of the light, so everything worked out great.

My old lady got a new job. It is a very small company that has no 401k, no direct deposit, practically nothing modern financially, or technologically speaking. This being the case, I have been doing lots of research on things like health insurance, life insurance, dental and vision insurance, IRAs 401Ks, etc..

In the process I had a revelation of sorts. It occurred to me that since I am putting 8% of my income into my pre-tax 401k, that at retirement time, I will be taxed normal income rate on every single penny in the 401K. This may very well be into the millions of dollars that I will be taxed on. Since my company matches 50% up to 4% of the money I put into my 401K, this is absolutely free money, and there is absolutely no excuse for passing up free money. So everyone should put as much percentage into their 401K as their employer will match, but beyond that, why stick so much additional money in there in top of that amount, only to have the fine government take 25% of it away when you retire.

The alternative here is our good friend the Roth IRA. If you are not familiar with the Roth IRA, it is basically a traditional IRA with the following differences:

A: The contributions are made from your post taxed money, so the contribution are NOT tax deductible. What does this mean? Well, since you cannot deduct the amount from your taxes, you will pay in a little more, or more to the point, get back a little bit less in your tax return.

B: The contributions can be withdraw any time, without penalty! Since the government already has been paid the taxes on the money, you can just pull it back out if you want to. Here is the kicker though... Assuming you do not take the money out until retirement age, YOUR EARNINGS ARE NOT TAXED!!! What does this mean? This means if you somehow made a trillion dollars with the account, the government gets ZERO.

So the plan is to reduce my 401K contribution down to 4% to get all the free money possible from my company, then put the other 4% into a Roth IRA.

So get off your ass and be smart with your money. When you are old you will be glad you did.

I am not dead after all. I figured out how to get the x10 relay switches installed. It took a while (6+ months), but I got it done, now I am having some sort of other x10 issue, and I'll deal with that later...

Ok, so I wanted a snack so I bought a package of M&Ms, "Tear 'n Share" size. I found the contents of the pack intriguing. The package contained the following M&Ms:

(I should mention that this, to my knowledge, only applies to peanut M&Ms, whereas I have done no testing whatsoever on normal ones)

Total - 40
________
Yellow - 12
Green - 11
Orange - 8
Blue - 5
Red - 3
Brown - 1

I had some M&M's a couple of weeks ago and noticed the same kind of trend. When I was younger, there were two shades of brown M&Ms in each pack, and the browns were the dominate color in each package. I would like to know exactly what happened to make 99% of the brown M&Ms go away. Now, M&Ms all taste the same, regardless of their color, so that's right out. Next, the brown M&Ms are not native uncoated specimens, so they are having to make a brown candy coating, so they are using effort and time to create brown ones, so the less work theory is right out as well. why would they put forth effort to create brown M&Ms at all, if they are only going to have an average of 1 per pack.

The only theory I can come up with on this is that people don't want to eat doodoo colored M&Ms. This is sort of ridiculous, whereas TONS of other candy is the exact same, dull, brown poop color, but I would be willing to bet they spent millions of dollars to research and discover that Americans would prefer bright happy colors, rather than brown, when it comes to M&Ms.

This only serves to further the principle that most Americans are really fucking stupid.

Here is a photo I took to document the occurrence:

I really got nothing here.

I have a x10 wall switch that is supposed to be a relay switch so it can handle controlling a fluorescent light. It appears to be the hardest fucking thing in the whole world to get it hooked up, even though there are not that many wires. I guess because A. I don't want to destroy the new switches, and B. I don't want to shock my balls off.

I have been researching this shit for months since I got the damn things, and I still cannot make heads or tails out of any of it.

I am about to the point of using trial and error, which is a piss poor idea when dealing with 120 volts and 20 amps of electricity; However, if this is my last post, assume that I am dead.

This week has been odd, since July 4th was on a Wednesday. Most towns these days opt to have their parties and whatnot on a weekend on one side or the other of the holiday. My city had their on the Saturday before, but it got rained out because it was storming all week, and all day on the day of the party.

Anyway, last Friday we got off work at lunch time due to all the hard work we have been doing on a major project. Then again on Tuesday, they let us go at noon. So I used the rest of the day to chill out and browse the interwebs. Then on Wednesday, I spent all day cleaning my garage, which was long overdue. To complete this task, I bought one of these: http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?pid=00959903000

It is currently $251.99, on sale from $279.99. I got mine during the 4th of July sale for only $179.99. Good times. The thing is perfect. It held every single thing that I had laying out on my workbench. More on this later as I intend to photo document the cleanliness of it all.

Anyway, so Thursday and Friday were completely dead at work since everyone was on vacation. I browsed the interwebs all day both days. Reading the internets can be quite boring, and since I do this most of the time anyway, I was losing my mind from boredom, which brings me to today's topic: VAGINA.

It is probably a good thing I do not have one of these damn things, because I think I would stick every single thing I can think of into it. Absolutely anything that would fit inside of it, I would put in there at some point. If nothing else, just to say that I have. I think I would also attempt to use it as temporary storage, and things of that nature. I am sure that at some point, during the process, I would sustain injury, but then once I went to the hospital to have it repaired, I would come out of the experience with an even longer list of items that have been in there. The whole thought process makes me think if people that own one think this way as well. I don't think they would have the guts to admit it though, so we would never know. So by this standard, I sort of draw the conclusion that every single vagina has had everything that I can think of stuck in it at some point in time, and that makes me happy.