Sunday, October 31, 2010

The End Of An Muscle Car Giant

Pontiac, maker of muscle cars, ends after 84 years

Being of the "Baby Boomer" generation I grew up in the muscle car era and loved the power and sound of the the cars back in the day.  You had your Chevy Camaro, Chevelle, Nova and Vettes.  Ford had its Mustang/Shelby and Torino's. Mopar lovers had Charger/Super Bee and Barracuda's.  My favorite was Pontiac's GTO, Trans Am and Grand Prix's. Have owned a few GTO's over the year and still own a 68 Convertible that I enjoy on nice days. I am saddened to see this day come and the Pontiac Arrow Head insignia come to the end of the road.  Pontiac brand may be gone  but the GOAT's will live on.

Alcohol+Hot Tub=Death


Received call this morning from a good friend in Grand Prairie and immediately noticed panic in his voice.  He had his usual Halloween party and a co-worker of his wife who was drinking heavily turned up dead in his hot tub.  Luckily his two kids spent the night some where else and I passed on the party.  He told me that he was drunk and they went inside and fixed a late night snack and thought the guy was out for the night on the couch afterwards.  He and wife went to bed and awoke to find guest in hot tub dead this morning. He had called me to ask what he should do. Call 911..Dah! Also told him to contact his home insurance agent for liabilty reason.  Not a good halloween for him.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Window stickers on brothers Jeep

Water/Ice Dispensing Refrigerators

 
Never really looked up inside the ice and water dispensing portion of the refrigerator but when I did boy was it nasty.  So I disassembled the freezer door and removed the unit for a good sanitizing process.  Feel much better now!

Tea Party Shake down

Posted Image

We shall see what happens on Tuesday.  Don't forget to VOTE!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Rangers start Championship run tonight

Image: (From left) Cliff Lee of the Texas Rangers & Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants (© Charles Krupa/AP; Eric Risberg/AP)

Starting pichers Cliff Lee(Texas Rangers) and Tim Lincecum (SF Giants). Is it me but minus the hair are these guys not the same person.  Go Rangers!

Act like a President and light one up.




Good Old Charlie Sheen at it again

Charlie Sheen.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

"The Broker" for the drive


First of three for the road trip AZ to DFW Metroplex. Reviews to follow

Update review 10-23-10: Story about a Washington "Broker"caught up trying to fetch the highest dollar for a satellite jamming program to the Arabs, Chinese and Russian.  The cost, his partnenrs life and for him prison.  He gets a pardon by a CIA head manipulating an outgoing President.  After his prison release he is swiftly sent to Italy with a new identity and the CIA waits to find out who kills him first.  Good reading or listening in my case but felt there ending left a lot of loose ends.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Rangers going to the World Series

Image: Nelson Cruz of the Texas Rangers scores (©Elsa/Getty Images)

Rangers Going to the World Series


FINAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E

Yankees 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 3 0   
Rangers 1 0 0 0 4 0 1 0 x 6 7 0


Thursday, October 21, 2010

America's fastest-growing cities

Per recent study and boy are there a bunch of them the following Texas cities are in the Top 15. By Christopher Solomon of MSN Real Estate

1. Frisco, Texas
2. McKinney, Texas
7. Round Rock, Texas
13. Denton, Texas

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Welcome to Phoenix

I am accustomed to visiting with the Highway Patrol or local towns police on occasion usually for speeding unfortunately. We this morning was something different.  I was just sitting at a stop light like a good citizen and saw he was checking my truck out and then pulled from right lane to far left lane behind me,  Okay what did I do now.  He followed me to a side street then lit up the lights.  The usual questions are you packing, ah no but I do have a CHL, license, registration and insurance please, here and here I said and the registration is on the windshield.  The deer in headlights look appeared.  Had to explain how in Texas and a lot of others states we have stickers and do not have cards to carry in our already massive wallets.  Asked what I did wrong and he said my personal plates were registered to a Ford not the Chevy I have owned for past three years. Explained I have had same plates for past 30 years and they stay with the car I own at that time.  More blank looks and he walked back to his vehicle with my info.  Reappeared to tell me plastic covers are not allowed in AZ which I said I was only here a few days.  He also asked if I owned a 1995 Ford? Ah yes, two suburbans and a Mercury back.  Oh guess our database is behind.  He asked me to remove my plastic lens or get a ticket so I did that right then and asked if that was a requirement to enter the state.  He laughed and said have a nice day.  The scary thing is with all the terror alerts and illegals crossing over and their database has plates tied to a car I owned 15 years back and not my current one makes you wonder how safe we really are.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Facebook Security Breaches - Again

Facebook Privacy Breach: 3 Simple Settings You Need To Know NOW

Get used to it!  If you are on the NET you will fall victim at one time or another to getting your information accessed.  There are too many hackers nowadays that can find firewall holes.  Some hack for the challenge and some get paid a large sum depending the information they get.  With the social network  expanding every second people are telling the world information they should think twice about.  Some of this information such as where you live, work, age, sex, school, when you are leaving on a trip, where you shop are just some information people are using. Other information such as passwords that you use frequently that may get them in to your financial pockets are also found by "fishing".  These are Emails that are sent seeking you to log on to verify your accounts on PayPal, Facebook, AOL or others.  Beware and Be careful.

Monday, October 18, 2010

"Wallstreet: Money Never Sleeps" Review

After a quick workout I think I traveled all of Scottsdale, Mesa and Tempe searching for an early movie time for Wallstreet:Money Never Sleeps". FYI the Scottsdale Fashion Mall has two Harkins theatre, one inside and one outside.  Guess which one I went to?  Scratched the inside mall one after going to wrong one and opted for Cinema 16 in Tempe only another 15 minutes (took 45 min)away in traffic. Sat down with two other people in the whole theatre and took in a disappointing sequel of the original 1987 movie Wallstreet that Michael Douglas won Best Actor for in 1988.  Michael Douglas showed his age at the onset when released from prison, then makeup took over after his comeback.  Not a big Shia LaBeouf fan and thought he could have done a better job with his character.  Frank Langella was very good but his role was cut short.  Carey Mulligan who played Winnie, Gekko's daughter I thought was very good during the emotional scenes.  Josh Brolin had a takeover bully role that was a so so  performance in my mind.  The premise of the movie is all about the collaspe of the financial market that happened a few years back with the original Wallstreet script intertwined.  The movie seemed to repeat and for a 130 minute movie it dragged on and on. Charlie Sheen aka Bud Fox from the original "Wallstreet" movie made a cameo.  The soundtrack was by David Byrne (Talking Heads) and I have heard the song on XM getting a lot of air time. In the movie I think they overplayed it by doing it every which way you can.  From my review I you can read that I did not like the movie so a thumbs down to this one and maybe 2.5 our of 5 rating.  Don't expect any awards for this one.  Just my thoughts.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Arizona Landscape

 
If you like Dirt and Hot this is the place to come.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Fitting tattoo, from a friend

Phoenix, AZ Trip

Last Saturday headed to AZ after stopping at ranch for a bit.  Had mapped out my route a few days prior and decided on north track through Texas, New Mexico and in to AZ. Turned out to be a good choice.  Easy 15 1/2 drive going straight through clicking off 1027 miles.  Two hour difference in time probably played a trick on my mind too so that helped.
Typical long exhausting days when out of town,  Taking a break tomorrow for some R&R and then paperwork.  Need to get out and walk again something I have been too busy for the past four days.

Things about AZ I have noticed.  No lawn mowers just a rake is required to rake DIRT. Drivers are horribly slow and hangout way to much in left lane.  I have a need for speed! Stores are havens for dumb ass and lazy workers.  I did experience some hope at lunch today over hearing a conversation between two software programmers.  They even had me baffled at some of their jargon. Its dark at 6 PM here.
Well its only 11 PM still have a few hours of work on my plate. Later!

Random Questions
You Are The Outdoorsy Type


You love the smell and feel of fresh air. You're always happiest when you're outside.

You enjoy physical activity, and it's likely that you're quite athletic. You think it feels good to move.



You aren't exactly a health nut, but living a healthy lifestyle matters to you. You like to take care of yourself.

You have a sense of adventure, and you're up for trying anything... as long as it isn't harmful.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Dinner at Rockfish. Yum

Yesterday's Movie Review

Went to view "The Social Network" movie at Harkins and noticed a few things:

Total viewers for 12:30 showing was one couple, myself and another person

Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) creator of Napster had shares in Facebook

Twins who sued Facebook actually participated in Beijing Olympics and placed sixth. They also settled for 65 Million Dollars in their suit against Facebook now worth 25 billion dollars.

The actors who played the twins are not real twins. They are Armie Hammer and Josh Pence.

Brilliant performances by Jesse Eisenberg(Mark Zuckerberg) and Andrew Garfield (Eduardo Saverin).

Executive producer is actor Kevin Spacey

The movie takes you from court hearings to the creation of Facebook at Harvard and on to Palo Alto for the ultimate explosion of Facebook network. Very well scripted and breaks out the different interpretations of how it evolved.  Jesse Eisenberg does an exceptional job of playing the boy genius with an attitude Mark Zuckerberg. The friendship between Mark and Eduardo is destroyed due to the creation of Facebook.  This movie will definitely be an Oscar contender for "Best Movie" and a must see.