After a hardware disaster, corrupted backups, professional data restoration, a hardware upgrade complete with more hardware failure (somehow a new power supply i bought at FRY’s was DOA!), everything is mostly back to normal. Everything is running on newer builds of php and mysql, with 4x the processing power and 4x the RAM. I’ve seen mysql crash a few times already, though, so we’ll see how that goes.

If you see somethinng missing or broken, let me know!

Before i get to the wood part of the project, can you identify the object the wood goes with?

If you’ve never seen one stripped down, you might not recognize it. Here’s a better “pre” picture that will make everything clear.

OMG SO SCARY AK47 MACHINEGUN!!11!! No, its an AK variant, a Yugoslavian M70AB2 underfolder. Its semi-automatic, not a “machine-gun”, so don’t get your panties in a bunch. It’s less powerful than most hunting rifles. Yes, it accepts 30+ round magazines, but so does almost any semi-auto gun these days. Why do i have one? Because (1) i like guns, and (2) the bill of rights says i can, so there! And this way when zombies attack or red dawn goes down, i’ll be ready…Everyone should have at least one AK!

I was browsing random crap on ebay today…and on my profile, saw this:

Member since: Feb-16-99 in United States

Holycrap, really? I’ve been buying stuff off ebay for a decade? I thought that ebay would die a quick death, like some of the other auction sites that we bought computer stuff from in college….

I posted most of this as a comment on the blog of Michael Yon, a former special forces operator turned war journalist, in a response to his post: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/tons-of-arms-flowing-to-mexico.htm. I really respect Michael, and read all of his disptaches and own all of his books, including a signed copy of Moment of Truth in Iraq.

Michael’s post is really just a link to a government document full of statistics about “tons” of guns going to Mexico. All of the block quotes here are quotes from the government document.

I’m sorry, but the President is not supposed to be your friend. Going on TV with a NCAA bracket? Going on Jay Leno while being President? Neither of these things is Presidential. The former is a thing that a 23 year old high school teacher right out of college would do to be friends with high school girls. The latter is something you do on the campaign trail. We get it, you’re cool. Now get over yourself and get to work.

Very weird game. It ended in the middle of the story. It took me a while to get a hang of the controls and equipment, and then about the time i was really getting into it, a cutscene ends, and the credits start rolling…

The lack of any kind of in game map was a giant pain, especially in the “cyberspace” thing… which should have had a better name. I mean, to most people that word has a meaning, and that meaning is not “lush green forest”.

What Combat Weaponry Are You?

M-134 “Mini-Gun”

A true brute, you have a “presence” every where you go. You can take on any opponent with little effort, your dependable and your reputation does the talking.

Click Here to Take This Quiz

Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

YES!

So last night i tried to go to the xbox support website to get my 360 repaired. But the site was down for maintenance.

Today i went to the support website to get my 360 repaired. I get a useless page that tells me to fill in fields that don’t exist:

That’s awesome. So i have to call the 18004MYXBOX number and talk to the robot. Then i got a guy, and we went through the troubleshooting. Yes, 3 red lights, yes the upper right one is off, yes the power supply light is green. Tried it without the hard drive, tried it without a memory card, i’ve done this before, the console has been repaired before. If you leave it off for a few hours, it will start up and you may or may not get into the dashboard. I got in long enough to copy my profile to a memory card so that worst case i can play on jimbo’s xbox during xmas…

With my stimulus check, i built a rifle! And since my xbox has RRoD’d again, i have some free time to write about it!

Assembly

It all starts as what they call a “stripped lower receiver”. This is the part that the government classifies as a “firearm”. Even though it barely resembles a gun (its just a milled piece of aluminum with some holes cut in it), it has a serial number, you have to buy it at a gun shop and fill out paperwork and everything.

An open letter to my computer controlled squad-mates in Battlefield: Bad Company. I wrote a very similar letter to my computer controlled squad mates in Call of Duty 4.

I caught most of the “A Colbert Christmas” special last night on comedy central. The last part of the episode, a duet between Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello was the best part of the whole show. An awesome little song, with a very memorable, very applicable holiday song. Here are the lyrics:

Sunday night, i awoke in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. Or, toothache, rather. I couldn’t tell which tooth, or even top or bottom, just that the left side of my face hurt. I took some advil, it went away, and I went back to sleep. Monday and Tuesday the toothache kindof came and went but there was no sensitivity to hot or cold or pressure, and i still couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Wednesday was more of the same until dinner time. During dinner, it got to the point that i couldn’t even chew on the left side, but at least i could tell which tooth it was. Wednesday night i barely slept. I probably got about 2 hours of total sleep in 5 minute chunks. Thursday morning i went to the dentist, they took xrays and said that i had an infection in that tooth, and that i’d need a root canal. I was given prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers and had to come back the next day for the root canal, as they want the antibiotics in your system for at least 24 hours.

You can’t really tell, but that is totally a camo hat! too bad i couldn’t figure out how to put it on backwards! I already signed up for a netflix trial membership and threw stuff into my instant queue and was watching superbad within 1 minute! sound was a little quiet, picture not super-awesome, but its still going to be so convenient, given that we can’t get on demand through the tivo.

Last year it was blue man group, this year: SMURFS!

4 of us were smurf boys:

(Brainy, Papa, Grumpy, Handy smurf left to right, and a nice background photoshop job by jay)

Last year we used blue liquid latex, which was a nightmare to put on, but trivial to take off, because it all just came off as one big piece. This year was blue grease paint makeup, which was easy to put on, but took forever to get off. For the entire weekend Laura was finding more blue paint in my hair here and there.

See for yourself!. Click + to zoom in.

I’m doing rock fingers, jay is doing the robot. We just barely saw him going by on our way to lunch. That was like 6 months ago? It was cold enough to wear a jacket…

Here’s another view that pete found:

We were just coming out the ping-pong-plaza door.

By December 31, 2009 (nine, not eight), the Seattle Merck “lab” is closing. But Rosetta Biosoftware isn’t technically the lab, so there are other plans in the work for Rosetta Biosoftware and GEL Operations. We don’t know all the details yet, so that kinda sucks, but i’m not too worried about it right now.

Its kinda sad: in a ~3500 word press release about Merck’s 3Q2008 earnings, its single a whopping sentence:

I have been a little busy for the past oh, 10 weeks, so i haven’t gotten to post. But i’m always busy with something, so i figure i should just post some little posts more often.

So here’s a fun one!

Just over 10 weeks ago, Laura had our first child (of many, i’m sure. i’m not a basketball fan, so maybe a hockey team? baseball team is wishful thinking!), Easton John Gardner. If you’re following my flickr easton collection contents like our friends and family, you already know that!

Go away for 5 minutes, and look what happens. Delicious goods appear!

Go watch it. The third part is supposed to go live tomorrow (the 19th) and the first two parts are awesome. I love Neil Patrick Harris, and this is pure genius on Joss Whedon’s part as well. NPH is our favorite part of How I Met Your Mother, and playing himself in the Harold & Kumar movies is fantastic. So go watch it already. It would be awesome if they could turn this into a series of some kind, even if it was web based or i had to download it through iTunes or my X360.